The View From Below

How often do you find yourself looking down as you travel? At your phone, your shoes, the street. Distracting yourself from your surroundings. Do you even realize doing it? A better question would be, “How often do you find yourself looking ahead, around, or above?” By design, our brain filters out information that it deems unnecessary. Those experiences become lost in the realm of short-term memory, doomed to never see the beautiful ocean of our long-term memory. It is, however, our conscious decision to determine what becomes an experience worth remembering. So the next time you find yourself wandering around a new part of town, or a country or city you’ve never been to, make a concerted effort to look up and around. Defy your brain’s control over what you remember. Make notes, take photos, capture video. Because the less you allow yourself to remember, the shorter life will feel. // NOTE: This photo is part of MetaObscura's "The AE-1" project, originally taken in Amsterdam in 2017 on my Canon AE-1, double-exposed in-camera on Ilford FP4 Plus 35mm film.