I’ve been told on many occasions that I “have a good eye” when it comes to photography. It’s usually offered as a compliment, a shorthand explanation for why certain images seem to work. But I’ve never been fully satisfied with that phrase. A good eye sounds innate, almost accidental. What I hear instead is something more specific: that I have a heightened awareness of my surroundings, and that I notice things most people move past without registering.
That awareness didn’t originate in photography. It came first from life.
Long before I began thinking seriously about focal length, composition, or sequencing images into a narrative, I developed something known as situational awareness. Not as a concept or theory, but as a necessity. Situational awareness is the practiced ability to perceive what’s happening around you, understand what it means, and anticipate what might happen next. It’s commonly discussed in military, law-enforcement, and personal-safety contexts, but at its core it’s simply about being present and attentive in real time.
Only later did I realize how directly that mindset maps onto photography.
Observation Is Not Enough
In a recent YouTube talk on developing a stronger photographic eye, the speaker describes awareness as a muscle—something that needs to be trained through repetition. He opens with an example involving Todd Hido, who once used rain on a windshield not as an obstacle, but as a visual filter, turning a frustrating condition into an expressive tool. That example stuck with me, because it illustrates a crucial distinction: observation versus awareness.
- Observation is noticing what’s there.
- Awareness is understanding how it can be used.
Most people look, but don’t truly see. We filter our surroundings aggressively just to function—commuting, walking, working without being overwhelmed by visual information. Photography asks us to dismantle that filter. To slow down. To notice how light falls across a wall, how shadows stretch and collapse, how reflections distort reality just enough to become interesting.
This is something I’ve written about before, particularly in Finding Style in the Street: The 28mm Field of View and the Discipline of Presence. Walking the city with a wide lens forces you into proximity. You can’t hide from the environment. You have to read it.
Situational Awareness, Reframed
Situational awareness is often broken into three stages:
- Perception – noticing elements in the environment
- Comprehension – understanding what those elements mean
- Projection – anticipating how the situation might evolve
In photography, perception is seeing the light, the gesture, the relationship between subjects. Comprehension is recognizing why it matters—why this alignment, this expression, this shadow is worth paying attention to. Projection is anticipation: waiting for the subject to step into the light, for the frame to resolve, for the moment to arrive.
This is where photography intersects cleanly with the ideas behind the decisive moment, often associated with Henri Cartier-Bresson. Not as a sniper-like reflex, but as a state of readiness—what I’ve described elsewhere as the alignment of head, eye, and heart. You don’t stumble into those moments. You prepare for them.
In personal-safety literature, this preparedness is sometimes described using Jeff Cooper’s color-code system: moving through the world in a relaxed but alert state, rather than being oblivious or hyper-reactive. Photographically, that’s the difference between wandering aimlessly with a camera and moving through the city with intent, even when you don’t yet know what the photograph will be.
Familiarity Is the Enemy
One of the most revealing parts of the YouTube talk is the discussion about photographing ordinary spaces—a hallway, a towel on a desk, a corridor that’s been walked through a thousand times. Familiarity dulls awareness. We stop seeing because we think we already know what’s there.
I’ve experienced this repeatedly. Some of my most satisfying images have come from places I’d ignored for years. Only when I slowed down and paid attention—really paid attention—did the photographs reveal themselves. This idea underpins projects like Faces of Toronto and even my ongoing Friday Night Lights work, where repetition and constraint sharpen awareness rather than limit it.
Photographers like Garry Winogrand understood this deeply. His work wasn’t about exotic locations or perfect conditions. It was about relentless observation, about staying open to what the street offered moment by moment.
A Prepared Mind
The YouTube talk closes with a phrase that resonates strongly with me: a prepared mind. In safety training, preparation reduces reaction time and increases clarity. In photography, it does the same. When your awareness is already engaged, you don’t waste time warming up. You don’t miss moments because you’re still mentally switching gears.
This is why walking—without necessarily photographing—is such an important part of my practice. Awareness doesn’t require a camera. It requires attention. The camera simply records the result.
When people tell me I have a good eye, what they’re really seeing is the byproduct of that attention. Not talent. Not luck. Just the habit of being present, reinforced over years, and finally given a visual language through photography.
In the end, photography didn’t give me awareness. It gave my awareness a place to land.