Learning to see anew

I went for a vigorous spin on my bike last Sunday, and for once didn't take a camera - it was raining. But even without a camera, I found myself looking more appreciatively around me, taking more delight than usual in the lines, patterns, colours, shapes and forms of everything around me.

Vision is a highly "synthetic" process, meaning that the brain has to work hard to combine all the visual input from our eyes, moment by moment. What we see and take for granted as "reality" is in fact a selective composition that we put together in our heads without knowing it. And one of the most striking things about taking photos -certainly at first - is the huge difference between what we think the picture will look like and what actually emerges.

For me, taking photos purposefully is turning out to be an on-going process of re-learning how to see - a real adventure.