Perhaps He Sees Something We Can’t

I had a few hours to kill before work one morning, so I decided to head down to a public garden a few miles from my house and take some pictures. In the summer this place is full of color, with roses growing everywhere—up trellises, along the walls, above your head. It’s an old Fort on the seafront, built to defend the city from French invasion.

At this time of year, it was dead. The only color was the light grey of the footpaths and the brown of the soil. I was sitting on the ground, trying to get some nice low angle shots of the sundial in the middle, when a couple of little old ladies walked along behind me.

I didn’t hear much, but I did hear one of them say,

Perhaps he sees something we can’t.

As I was cycling home again, I started to think about what they had said. Since I started taking photography seriously, I often find that I think about what I see in a different way. I try to look past the everyday stuff and look for the underlying patterns in the world around me, or the color in unexpected places.

Instead of thinking “Oh, that’s a nice view.” I think about how best to capture the moment and share it with the world. I don’t think I saw anything that they could not, but I hope I was able to see it in a different way.

PS: For those people who are curious, here are some of the photos I took at the Fort that day. It’s not my best work though:

About the author: Martin Cox is an amateur photographer based in Portsmouth, UK. You can find more of his work on his website. This story was also shared here.