I went round to my friend Chris’s house on Friday night to meet his new dog, a rescue puppy Rottweiler called Roxy (she’s adorable by the way). We sat and chatted for a while, and then I said, “I’ve got an urge.” Chris being Chris didn’t bat an eyelid. “An urge for what?”

“Just to make something, design something, do something creative.”

I love finding new design resources and code snippets as part of my job, but it’s also frustrating that some days I just want to create, especially if I haven’t done anything for a while. Even if it’s just messing around. Normally I’d just sit at a computer and do something, but between going out for dinner and drinks with Chris on Friday, doing house chores on Saturday and then having some friends over on Saturday night, I just didn’t get the chance.

This morning I woke up to a beautiful blue summer sky and decided I was going to get out of the house with my camera.

One of the best things about living where I do is that it’s pretty much as urban or rural as you want to make it. Yes, it’s a city (a small one, but big enough to scare my ‘country mouse’ friends who genuinely get freaked out when they visit), but it also has a river, canal, two nature reserves and easy links to the countryside.

All I needed was my legs and my camera, so after packing both lenses in my small camera bag (I was debating whether or not to take my macro lens since it’s heavy and the wind was bad – terrible for macro photography), but I’m so glad I did.

I ended up walking about five miles and taking nearly 400 pictures. It was just me and my camera – no people asking me questions, no social media, nothing. The weather was fantastic and whilst I didn’t get any ‘wow’ shots, it was fun to just relax and enjoy my own company.

I’ve been reading about mindfulness lately. It’s all about being aware of what’s around you in the present and appreciating it and finding the beauty in it. If anything makes me concentrate on one particular thing in the present and block out the rest of the world, it’s photography.

Getting ‘the’ shot takes every part of my attention and brain power – even more so now I (kind of) know what the settings do and have to focus on things like aperture settings and exposure compensation. Everything you’d normally walk past without noticing – blades of grass, stones, the odd flower or blackberry – suddenly becomes a potential subject. Even though 99% of things are rejected because the composition’s not right or there’s a bit of dead petal, it definitely makes you more aware of everything ever. In a good way, not in an overwhelming way.

And since my photography course I’m not afraid to suddenly sit down on the path or crouch in an incredibly unflattering position in the interest of getting a good shot or a new angle. Of the 1% of shots that work, a large proportion of those will be rejected once uploaded because of focus drop off, things that can’t be Photoshopped out, other similar photos that are slightly better, etc.

But even after spending a few hours taking photos and then quickly processing them a bit, it still hasn’t completely satisfied my creativity urge, so I’m off to start designing a new theme before I go to the gym :D