Get right in there

One way of looking more carefully at things is to study them at close quarters. There is a whole world waiting to be discovered, once we start looking at detail we usually ignore.

Take these clogs (I wish somebody would). They are pretty straightforward items, crafted with care from coloured leather and shaped wood. Pictured as a pair like this, I wouldn’t accept them even as an advert, handwritten on a postcard, in the “Second-hand” section of a shop window. There’s just nothing of interest, once you get past all that red.

Most point-and-shoot digital cameras allow you to focus on subjects which are only three or four camera lengths from the lens. Somewhere, on a dial or menu, there will be an icon representing a flower. Look for a tulip-shaped symbol. Selecting this mode (“Macro”) is the modern equivalent of attaching a supplementary close-up lens to the front of an old Box Brownie. Suddenly you can push the camera into a scene that interests you, as if you, like Alice, had drunk from that magic bottle, then shrunk in stature.

Close-up photography is fun. It gives you a beetle’s view of the world. It will make you think differently about photographing the apparently mundane.