There’s a scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off where Ferris looks straight into the camera and says:
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
Ferris Bueller
It’s a classic line. The “carpe diem” of 1986. And while it may have been Ferris’ justification for skipping school, he had a point nonetheless. The days often feel like a blur passing me by. Twenty four hours like twenty four minutes when I look back on yesterday. When it’s time to head to bed at night, I’m not ready. Another day has come and gone and I can’t bear bringing myself to bed.
The day’s already gone?
The day is already gone.
It’s been raining lately. That I know. If not for the dreary weather, I’m not sure I’d recall much of the past week once the days retreat into the calendar. The week before — did I notice a cloud?
What if I could slow time down?
What if you could?
The idea is simple. It’s not terribly original. I’m sure millions of people have done this worldwide at one point or another. But at the same time it’s not something I’ve ever put into motion. The idea?
Take one photo a day of the world around me.
Nothing fancy. No special equipment — just my phone. No pressure to share it with anyone. No need to post the photo or have an underlying intention behind it like getting likes or hearts or going viral. I’m not on social media and I’m not signing up for an Instagram account.
I could post the photos on my blog. Although, it’s unlikely. The thought of uploading 30 photos with corresponding alt-text would turn this from capturing tiny moments of wonder into a chore I’m not particularly interested in undertaking.
Of course, if you decide to do this challenge in July, or even play catch-up in June, and you want to share your photos, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’d even encourage it. It’s likely I will, too, at some point. Maybe I’ll include a photo here and there as the header image for my blogs. Or maybe I’ll write small stories about certain photos. Hard to say.
The point isn’t to produce a great work of art or become a professional photographer. The point is noticing the world around me. To train my eyes to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. To give my attention muscles a workout. That way the world becomes more vivid to me and time slows down for a change.
I walked to the top of my driveway earlier. There are tiny yellow flowers and clovers sprouting up from the soil. A lawn company would refer to these as weeds. I don’t cut them though. There’s life on the pedals. Various bee species visit and collect pollen — even a type of bee many dislike in summer months.
The sweat bee.
That’s where the idea to take one photo a day came from actually: sweat bees. I’m not sure I would’ve noticed them zipping around the yellow flowers had I not bent down to look.
A few years ago, my wife picked up a book about bees from our local library. I can’t remember the title, but I found it fascinating. And there, on one of the pages, was the tiny sweat bee. Like the honey bee and others, it’s a pollinator.
I had no idea.
I thought their primary objective in life was biting sweaty people like me in summer. I figured they like sweat and salt — that pollen wasn’t on their menu. Now, whenever I see a sweat bee, I think about this. I don’t shoo it away. It needs salt to survive its back and forth quests collecting pollen so the world doesn’t collapse all around us.
I started this personal challenge on June 1. No rules. No themes. Just one photo, every day. Maybe by month’s end, I’ll have 30 tiny reminders of the world around me. A world I sometimes forget to pay attention to as it speeds on by.
Who knows? Maybe in thirty days, my world will have slowed down and I’ll see things differently than I did before. With each day and each photo, I’m realizing I already do.