Looking for blue
An exercise from Rob Walker's The Art of Noticing has me looking blue
This weekend’s prompt: choose a colour and capture it – by photographing, drawing, writing, however you like – in the things you see while out and about. Then, come back to this post and we’ll compare notes!
I have recently finished listening to the audiobook of Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing. It’s been a fantastic read and I’ve already recommended it to several friends. Filled with activities and exercises to improve how much you notice in your daily life, The Art of Noticing hopes to ‘bring focus to the things and people that are most important to you’. Rob also runs a great Substack.
One of my favourite prompts to try has been to take a ‘colour walk’: to use a camera or smartphone to capture all instances of a chosen colour while you’re out and about. I chose the colour blue. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but the day itself was already a blue occasion: it was a family trip to Devon that was one person short. The weekend was supposed to be a birthday present for my Grandpy, but he passed away in January, 10 days after his 90th.
The weekend itself was full of ups and downs. Sunny, then pouring rain. Happy memories, sad thoughts. Every so often I would see something that reminded me of an event in the past and I’d think, “I should text Grandpy to tell him, he’ll smile at that”. Or I’d be walking down the street, my parents meandering slowly, chatting away, and forget that my grandparents weren’t also walking behind, just out of view, arguing in their friendly manner.
I felt I had to be quite careful, quite controlled, on that trip. One thought could lead me down a road that would end in tears. Surprisingly, it was Walker’s exercise that proved one of the best ways to avoid this spiralling.
The below photographs are from the day in Brixham. It’s a place I’d been many times before with my grandparents, mum and step-dad, on countless family holidays. It’s funny, but looking through my camera lens in search of blue helped me stop thinking of all the things I wished my Grandpy could be seeing with me. Of course, I still grieved. Perhaps it was destined to be a blue weekend, but we had a lot of fun amongst the tears.
Let’s compare notes
Giving this activity a go yourself is really easy – take your smartphone or camera out on a walk and choose a colour to capture. It’d be quite fun to go as a group, I think, and each have a different colour so that you end up with a wonderful rainbow album of your time together! Or perhaps you and your companion could choose the same colour and, adding an element of challenge, see who can collect the most images?
This exercise can also be adapted, if you’re unable to go outside for an explore. See how many things you can find in your home, or look through old photo albums and collect them into piles of colour.
You could also try ‘capturing’ the colour in a different way! Take a notepad and pencil to sketch what you see, or write down a list that will become, at the end, a colourful poem.
Are you going to give it a try? Let me know in the comments.
I’d love to see the colours you collect!