For twelve months I walked the exact same path to the train station every morning, and I started documenting the small changes I noticed along the way.
The magnolia tree on 4th Street bloomed three weeks earlier this year than last. The blue door at number 27 was painted yellow in August, then red again by October. The couple who always walked their greyhound past the bakery stopped coming around in September—I don’t know why, and I never will.
There’s a rhythm to a route you walk every day. You stop seeing it after a while, or you think you do. But if you pay attention, it’s always changing. The light is different. The shadows move. Things appear and disappear.
I started taking the same photo every day from the same spot, just to track it. A hundred photos of the same street corner, and not one of them looks the same. The seasons, obviously. But also the small things. A new bench. A crack in the sidewalk that got wider. The way the light hits the brick building across the street at 8:17am in March versus 8:17am in October.
I think we underestimate how much we’re always seeing, even when we think we’re not paying attention. The information is there. We just have to decide to notice it.