As the years go passing by

Walking around near the place where you live gives ample opportunity to see the changes. Some changes occur slowly, step by step, others appear overnight. One of the big differences in this region is that many places previously available are now fenced off. Sometimes, it is hard to see any reason why, sometimes it’s because a piece of land that was abandoned for years got bought and at some future moment development will start.

Understandable, yet annoying. Especially when a beautiful location is being sacrificed in favour of some ugly condominion or office building. It is even worse, when nothing happens to a place and it’s simply no longer accessible.

There are times, I decide it is safe to perform a bit of trespassing. Last year, I passed a lot that was fenced off on one end and on the other side it was completely open. Admittedly, the open side required a bit of scrambling, but it resulted in photos that I consider satisfactory.

The changes easiest to accept are the ones by the forces of nature. After a big storm or depression there is always what we call damage, but in nature does not need a name. Uprooted trees, brokens branches, earthwalls that collapsed under heavy rain.

Of course, man is also a force of nature, for better and for worse. Can we blame a homeless man when he occupies an abandoned house to make it his home?

Resistance is futile

If there is one thing that is a recurring factor in life, it’s change. It is inevitable. Remember the saying about the peble thrown in a river changing the river? It’s true. We never walk through the same street twice. We may not notice the difference since the last time we visited a location, but it will be there. A previously opened curtain is closed or has disappeared completely. The tree on the corner has more or less leaves, or it was recently pruned.

The faster a city developes, the more noticable changes will be. That may seem obvious, but to our brains it isn’t. It can take us days or even weeks to notice that a building’s façade has been renovated or the barking dog behind its fence has died.

If we would notice every little change, we would go mad. Our brains have evolved into remarkably tuned instruments. Tuned to - hopefully - notice what’s important, and to ignore what is not. In order to find interesting things to photograph we almost want to be able to switch that way of looking at and recognizing our surroundings off momentarily, so we can start seeing the smaller details in the bigger picture.

One thing that can help us doing exactly that, is slowing down. By litteraly moving our bodies slower through where we are, and force ourselves to look longer at what we encounter, we will alter what we see and as such our experience. Suddenly, that broken branch becomes obvious. We start to wonder how we missed the inconsistent numbering on the buildings we pass.

Embrace the changes, rather than resisting them. Yes, that abandoned building was a great subject to make pictures of, but it is gone now and nothing we say, do or think will bring it back. Be glad we shot it while it was still there.