#findingbeauty

see this thing all the time.

It’s a sensory board we have at work, covered in hundreds of tiny sequins. The kids can run their hands across them, flip them back and forth, change the colors, make patterns, or sometimes just enjoy the feeling of them moving beneath their fingers.

Normally, I see it from above.

A bunch of colorful sequins.

Then I put my camera almost level with it.

And suddenly, it looked enormous.

Individual sequins became little overlapping discs of color. The ones closest to my camera stayed sharp while everything behind them melted into tiny circles of light.

It almost looked like a landscape.

Nothing about the sensory board had changed.

I had.

Or, more specifically, my perspective had.

That’s something I love about photography.

It gives me an excuse to look at ordinary things from angles I probably never would otherwise.

Sometimes looking closer really does mean getting closer.

Other times, it means getting lower.

Turning something around.

Looking underneath it.

Standing somewhere you normally wouldn’t.

Because sometimes there isn’t anything new waiting to be discovered.

Sometimes you’ve already seen it a hundred times.

You just haven’t seen it like this yet.

— Destiny

P.S. Pick something ordinary around you today and look at it from an angle you normally wouldn’t. You might be surprised by what it turns into.

Sometimes looking closer means seeing something beautiful.

Sometimes it means looking into your aquarium and wondering what exactly your snail thinks she’s doing.

Because apparently the glass wasn’t interesting enough.

The plants weren’t interesting enough.

No.

She needed to climb.

All the way to the top.

And then hang there like this was a completely normal decision.

So, naturally, I grabbed my camera.

I’ve watched snails move around an aquarium plenty of times, but there was something different about seeing her from this angle.

Usually, we see the shell first.

The spiral.

The part that makes us immediately recognize a snail as a snail.

But from underneath, she looked completely different.

Her shell became this enormous shield above her body. Her tiny head peeked over the edge. One little antenna stretched outward while the other disappeared somewhere behind her.

And somehow, an animal we usually think of as slowly crawling along the bottom had managed to get herself all the way up there.

I think that’s what I like about taking pictures of little things.

You start noticing how strange everything actually is.

Snails climb.

Moths have fuzzy heads.

Insects have colors and patterns we can’t see until we’re inches away.

Things that seem ordinary from a distance become almost alien when you get close enough.

And this particular little alien apparently wanted the penthouse view.

I have no idea what she was looking for up there.

Maybe nothing.

Maybe she simply discovered she could climb it and decided to keep going.

Either way, I’m glad I stopped long enough to notice.

Because sometimes looking closer doesn’t reveal some profound lesson about life.

Sometimes it just reveals a snail doing something weird.

And honestly?

I think those moments deserve to be noticed, too.

— Destiny

P.S. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever caught one of your pets doing?