Noticing 02

Shoes by the Door

Sometimes the people in our photographs don't need to be in the frame.

There are photographs we know to take.

A birthday cake before the candles are blown out. Someone standing at the edge of the ocean. A child on the first day of school.

And then there are the things we walk past every day.

A pair of little rain boots by the door.

A scooter left outside.

A backpack on the floor.

None of them seems particularly worth photographing. They're just things that haven't been put away yet.

But look again.

The boots tell you something before you've seen the child who wears them.

Their size. Where they were left. A scooter farther out in the yard tells you a little more.

Someone was here.

And for a while, this was what their life looked like.

It can be easy to think that photographing someone's life means pointing the camera at them.

Often it does.

But the things surrounding a life can become part of its record too.

The shoes that always collected beside the door. The drawings taped to the refrigerator. The cereal bowl that somehow never made it to the sink. The dog's leash hanging from the same hook. The backpack dropped in the same place after school.

Most of these things aren't remarkable enough to make us reach for a camera.

That's what makes them easy to lose.

A few years from now, the rain boots will be too small. The backpack will change. The toys will disappear from the floor. Eventually, even the familiar clutter of a particular season of life will be replaced by different clutter.

You don't need to document all of it.

Just notice some of it.

The next time something ordinary catches your eye—a pair of shoes, an unfinished puzzle, a coat over the back of a chair—don't immediately ask whether it would make a good photograph.

If the answer is yes, there may already be a photograph there.