Last month, my wife Rafaela said something profound that deeply resonated with me:
“I want to create my reality from my heart, not from my mind.”
I think most of us are quite good at the mind part: the planning, the strategizing, the figuring things out. But creating from the heart is a different kind of skill: A quieter one that asks us to slow down and actually feel what’s in front of us and what is going on inside of us.
Today I want to share these five pictures I took in March. Nothing dramatic. No grand landscapes or decisive moments. Just five ordinary scenes from an ordinary month.
The bench by the blue door
The first picture is a bench at the back of our home, next to a blue door. Vertical lines, horizontal lines, pastel colours. At first glance it reads as calm.
But when I sit with it, there’s something quietly unsettling about it. A feeling that something important is happening just outside the frame.
The cherry plum tree
In our backyard there’s a cherry plum tree. It was the first tree to blossom this year, and I watched those flowers appear from our bedroom window – My personal small Hanami.
But the picture I took isn’t really of the blossoms. It’s of the shadow of the tree against the wall and then just a few branches with petals hanging down at the edge of the frame.
The presence of the tree is suggested.
We were moving out of that flat at the time and somehow that picture captured it perfectly. The transient nature of beauty. The way things bloom and fall and make way for what comes next. The Japanese have a whole philosophy around this.
Yellow rail into water
This one I took on my commute — concrete stairs leading down to a canal, a bold yellow railing at the water’s edge, and then a wide stretch of dark water filling most of the frame.
I love the yellow. That unapologetic, utilitarian yellow against the dark water.
What I love most is the feeling it gave me when I stood there. Like standing at a threshold. Uncertain whether to step forward. The water isn’t inviting: It’s vast, dark – like stepping into the unknown And yet there’s something honest about that.
The swan
A swan on almost-black water, drifting either into the frame or out of it – still not sure which.
Swans can feel like an easy subject. The white feathers, the elegant neck, the obvious contrast. But what drew me here was the angle — shot from slightly above — and the way the swan’s head bends gently downward, beginning to disappear into the darkness.
That small mystery at the edge of the frame.
The grass that moves like water
The last picture steps outside the series a little because it is in black and white. Dried grass, lying flat and flowing, the blades catching the light in a way that looks almost like gentle waves on water.
Very tangible. Very abstract at the same time.
I stood there just watching the grass. Noticing how it moved and noticing how the world got a little quieter.
What these five pictures taught me
When I look at these five images together, I see a month of thresholds. Of things that were beautiful and transient. Of shadows suggesting presence. Of standing at the edge of something unknown.
That’s what conscious photography keeps offering me. Not answers. Not a formula. Just this: beauty doesn’t wait for better times. It’s already here, asking to be noticed.
Asking us to stop, look, and notice life right here, in the backyard, on the commute, at the canal …
