Interesting Birthday Day
A photographer’s clothes hang on hooks on the back of the doctor’s examining room door. My Final Photo for October 23, 2025.
Another Year. Another …
Yesterday, my birthday, started as expected. I now have a prescription for that topical chemotherapy cream that seems to leave permanent scars. Emotional and psychological scars as I walk around for more than two weeks with oddly shaped and sized lesions that look like I’ve been hit with birdshot, not a cure.
One time I went through this procedure, and the wounds were very visible, a young woman standing next to me at the grocery store service counter turned to the worker and asked her what was wrong with me, as if asking me directly would expose her to the unknown plague so visible on my face and arms.
I turned toward her, took a step or two closer, and briefly explained that I would be eager to answer her question if she asked me, not someone nearby who could not possibly have the depth of knowledge and experience I have, as it was my body.
Apology accepted.
The Photographer’s Intuitive Gaze
Yesterday, that birthday when I published an article defining my process for discovering photos, is exactly the kind of day I mentioned.
I had just finished talking with a resident from a neighboring city about her starting a Substack newsletter. She was interested in my process for everything I do on Substack. It took some time.
As I stepped into the narrow hallway from the coffee shop back room, where we’d discussed sources, process, results, social media, old-school journalism, and the desire to bring local reporting to one of the fastest-growing counties in the country, I saw something across the street that looked unfamiliar.
We’re still talking as we step into the narrow hallway from the coffee shop’s back room. Sources, process, results, social media, old-school journalism, the drive to bring real local reporting to one of the fastest-growing counties in the country. Then something across the street catches my eye. It’s unfamiliar, out of place.
The conversation continues, but my focus shifts. I believe it’s the hunter instinct, something primal. Life feels manageable when things are familiar, when your movements follow a known path, when your actions meet expectations, and when results clearly lead to the goal. But as soon as something interrupts that flow, even slightly, the instinct awakens. It doesn’t speak in words. It doesn’t provide explanations. It simply pulls at your focus, quiet but certain.
That’s what I’ve started calling the photographer’s intuitive gaze. It isn’t about beauty or drama. It’s about disruption. Noticing what doesn’t belong, what feels out of rhythm, what seems like it wants to slip past unnoticed. It might be a flicker in the corner of your eye, a shape that unsettles the composition, a stillness that feels unnatural. You don’t know what it means yet. But you know it means something. And in that moment, the frame sharpens, the noise drops away, and you look again. This time with purpose.
Something in my view down that narrow corridor catches. The glass is cluttered with taped signs, people waiting on coffee, someone heading to the bathroom, and shelves stacked with free food. But beyond all that, there’s a shape that feels wrong. Not wrong like a threat—just unfamiliar. Different, but not entirely out of place.
It isn’t a car. It isn’t a van. It isn’t one of the usual work trucks lined up along that curb. My eye lingers on it a little longer than it should, and that’s when I realize. It’s a glass company truck. They’re delivering new windows to City Hall.
I didn’t intend to see it. My eye found it anyway. That’s the photographer’s gaze in action. The frame shifts, something registers, and before your brain can identify it, you’re already looking again.
It was instant. I could see the photo before it happened. The window openings were still covered in plastic. The new glass was still strapped to the truck. I knew what the next five minutes would look like.
I hurried to the back of the building, stashed my non-camera gear in the car, then moved around to the front, crossing against traffic as they began installing the window.
That was the photo; I’d already seen it. I’d been there when the old ones came out. Now I was back, catching the moment they went in.
The hunter instinct, or, as I now call it, the photographer’s intuitive gaze, is that split-second recognition of something off in the frame of the world. It’s a disturbance in the pattern, a flicker of contrast, or a shape or shadow that doesn’t fit. Just like a hunter senses movement in the brush, not by focusing directly but by catching the anomaly in the periphery, a photographer doesn’t always look for the subject. Sometimes, the subject reveals itself by being out of place.
The intuitive gaze reacts before it reasons. It sees before it knows. And in that moment, the photographer becomes less of an observer and more of a tracker, following the scent of something meaningful through the visual noise.
It helps to be on familiar ground where anomalies are more obvious, where small details stand out and minor conversations can reveal greater truths.
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