How to Look Better – tips for seeing treasures every day

I’m a good looker, you know. I don’t mean I’d win a beauty contest, just that LOOKING is something I’m good at, and I get a lot of pleasure from using my eyes to make creative connections and playful leaps that are the fuel for new ideas.

I believe looking better is a skill that can be learned and practised, and it’s so much fun, too. I mean, transforming familiar objects and buildings and everyday sights is the stuff of dreams and fairy tales, right?

I’ve collected together 9 tricks and tips that I use that help turn everyday sights into treasures. I hope you’ll have fun playing with them!

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Tip #1 : SLOW DOWN

Slowing down helps you notice more things. At speed our eyes tell us what not to bump into and what’s dangerous, but non-essential detail is not on hurried eyes’ agenda.

Move slowly – or even keeping completely still – and your eyes will have time to notice a lot more.

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Tip #2 : SEE SHADOWS

Shadow reveals and conceals. The way light falls on a building or an object can make you see a detail you’d never noticed – like the way the windows get a zigzag detail in shadow – , or completely changes the mood. Sometimes the light flattens surfaces so it’s all about the shapes of the shadows instead of the object itself.

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Tip #3 : PICK ONE THING

Pick something particular to notice – a shape or colour, an architectural feature or leaf structure, a certain font or embellishment – and suddenly you’ll start seeing it everywhere.

Instagram is a great place for collecting with your eyes. The Collections feature allows you to save images in folders – like my STRIPES folder you see in the pic above. Also, check out my @theattentionhabit, on Instagram, where I’ve been choosing one thing to notice each month since 2022.

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Tip #4 : EYES CLOSED

Sometimes we are so used to looking at something, we hardly see it any more. Try feeling it instead, closing your eyes, listening to sounds, considering words that come to mind, naming the mood you’re feeling, the feeling you get – and you’ll see more when you open your eyes.

When I closed my eyes and imagined feeling one of the grasses, I thought ‘fluffy’ , and when I looked again, I realised the clouds were fluffly like the grass, and that ‘fluffy’ can have a sound, too.

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Tip #5 : SEE ECHOES

Find the ‘conversations’ in a scene. Do some shapes ‘talk’ to other shapes? Are colours echoing each other? Does one thing remind you of another?

Patterns are a great way to see echoes. Look! That lady in stripey pants is standing against a palisade fence! Those guys at the pizza restaurant are wearing plaid shirts while sitting at a chequered tablecloth!

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Tip #6 : SEE REFLECTIONS

Reflections give your eye a different angle on things. Seek them out by changing your focal distance to look at what glass windows and dividers are telling you. In this pic, I was tickled by the reflection of palm trees in the bubbled window film of a car’s rear window that looked like clouds. The next time you’re opposite a building, focus your eyes on one of the windows. Does the reflection give you a fresh perspecive? What else can you see going on there?

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Tip #7 : CHANGE PERSPECTIVE

Go closer! Get underneath! Look up! Look down! Changing your viewpoint can shake up your expectations of how things ought to look. So stick your head inside the shrubbery and see how that looks. Lie on your back and look upwards. Imagine how a toddler might see things. Or a pigeon!

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Tip #8 : NOTICE INTERRUPTIONS

The single element that’s out of sorts with the others immediately makes you notice both the pattern and the disruption. It’s kind of a visual version of ‘the exception proves the rule’, or something like that. In this photo, the water bends the stripe, and the edges of the glass frames the sudden visual activity, making the stripe a lot more interesting.

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Tip #9 : GET PLAYFUL

When you start using your eyes to play with the world, you’re crossing that imaginary boundary between ‘reality’ and imagination. And then, when you add your hands, pick things up, look for more of them, put them in a row, take a snap, do a sketch, make a pattern, you’ll find that see even more than you saw the first time!

That’s really all there is to it! When people talk about “being creative”, all it means is they’ve become good at slowing down, looking at things from funny angles, and then playing with what they noticed as they imagine what’s next.

We can all do it. Just start practising!