Have We Forgotten How to Observe?

What if the thing holding back your creativity isn't a lack of talent, but a lack of noticing? Observation is a practice. The more efficiently we move through life, the less room we leave for curiosity, wonder, and original ideas.

In this episode, Meg draws a sharp distinction between looking and observing, exploring how curiosity transforms a passing glance into a story. She shares how attention shapes what becomes meaningful, memorable, and ultimately art-worthy.

You'll discover why children seem endlessly curious, how our brains are wired to predict the familiar, and why that can quietly flatten creativity. Meg also shares how her own ideas rarely arrive as fully formed concepts. Instead, they begin as ordinary details she notices in everyday life.

If you've ever felt creatively stuck, overwhelmed, or disconnected from your artistic instincts, this episode offers a gentle reset. Instead of chasing another editing trick, another lens, or another trend, Meg invites you to slow down, ask better questions, and make space for observation again.

Creators and Guests

Host

Meg Loeks

What is The Creative Thread?

The Creative Thread is a podcast about art, process, and the stories behind the work.

Hosted by photographer Meg Loeks, each episode explores what drives people to create: where ideas come from, how artists find their voice, and what keeps them going when the work feels uncertain.

Through conversations with artists and solo reflections, this podcast focuses on the in-between: the experimentation, the passion projects, and the quieter parts of building a creative life with intention.

Vanessa Rivera (00:00)
for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Elizabeth Blank (00:02)
accurate images,

Anjana Olson (00:05)
Yes, I adore Wes Anderson.

Meg (00:15)
Welcome to the Creative Thread. I'm your host, Meg Loeks,

Meg (00:19)
I've been thinking a lot lately about observation, not photography, not creativity, observation. Have we forgotten how to observe? Not because we're lazy, not because we don't care, but because life has become so efficient. We move from

Meg (00:40)
One task to another. We're constantly consuming information. Even our downtime is often filled with podcasts, ironically enough, music, scrolling, notifications. There isn't much room left for simply just noticing.

Meg (00:58)
Observation requires space. And I wonder if we've just stopped giving ourselves any.

Meg (01:05)
I think this is the heart of the episode. Looking is passive. Observation is active. Looking sees. Observation wonders. It's curious. Take for example, you walk past an old truck. Looking says, that's a really cool old truck. Observation asks, who rode it? Why hasn't anyone moved it? Why is it here?

Meg (01:32)
Why does this old truck make me feel nostalgic?

Meg (01:36)
One takes a second, the other begins a story. And there's actually science behind why curiosity matters here.

Meg (01:44)
Curiosity is closely tied to attention and information seeking. And research shows that when we're curious, we're more motivated to explore and to learn.

Meg (02:00)
I think it's so important to understand that creativity does not begin when you pick up a camera. Creativity begins when curiosity takes over.

Meg (02:10)
Think about walking through the woods with a five-year-old. It takes forever. They stop for a buck. They stop for a feather, or maybe a cool-looking mushroom, or a weird-looking stick, or maybe a rock that resembles a dinosaur. I have a four-year-old who loves dinosaurs. He's in his dinosaur era. As adults, we tend to call that distraction.

Meg (02:39)
But really and truly that's observation, that's noticing.

Meg (02:43)
Children are naturally driven to seek information and reduce uncertainty. Even preschool age children actively seek out information that helps them understand what's happening around them. Curiosity also supports learning and memory throughout childhood.

Meg (03:01)
So maybe children aren't distracted by everything. Maybe they're noticing everything.

Meg (03:07)
Adults have years and years of experience that allow us to kind of move through familiar environments almost automatically versus children who are just experiencing things, many things for the first time.

Meg (03:23)
Perfect example. We see a tree, but a child, they see bark, they see moss, they see a hole. Maybe something's living inside that hole. They see bugs on the tree, a strange-looking branch that kind of resembles maybe an arm and hand reaching out towards them. Maybe something to climb and possibly a fort. My kids love to build forts.

Meg (03:50)
I don't know. Maybe part of growing up is learning what we can safely ignore. And maybe part of being an artist is learning how to notice again.

Meg (04:03)
This is something I think almost everyone has done. Sometimes we find something really beautiful. Let's say it's a dewy spider web in a meadow or a beautiful flower along a trail or maybe a sunset. And our first instinct is to document it instead of sitting with it. What if we reverse that? What if we experienced first?

Meg (04:31)
And photographed second.

Meg (04:33)
Our brains are incredibly good at predicting the familiar. We don't have to study every doorknob we've ever seen. We already know what a doorknob does. That's useful, of course, but creatively, I wonder if sometimes we become so good at recognizing things that we stop really seeing them.

Meg (04:54)
Maybe observation is partly about interrupting what we think we already know.

Meg (05:01)
I think sometimes the camera gets in the way of the thing we're trying to remember. A perfect example here, when my children were really little, I was picking my camera up constantly. I was taking it everywhere with me. I did a 365 several years in a row. And if you don't know what that is, it's where you pick up your camera and shoot every single day.

Meg (05:28)
So I did this for several years in a row. And it was a great way to grow. But at the same time, looking back now, I feel like I was just missing some things. some really beautiful and important things, some really fleeting moments.

Meg (05:48)
As I've gotten older, I've definitely gotten better at slowing down, observing more, noticing more, and taking in those like little fleeting moments and details that are happening around me.

Meg (06:02)
Maybe you can relate to that. I think this also happens to a lot of us during busy season when our calendar is just jam-packed. We forget our reason why, why we're picking up our camera in the first place because things are just so busy.

Meg (06:18)
I think it's important to also know, you know, everybody's busy, right? I've got five kids, and I'm running my own business here. I've got a husband who is in the military who is away a lot. so I'm busy. I know that other people are busy, but I I do think that there's a certain discipline involved with slowing down, making yourself slow down, and noticing those little things.

Meg (06:44)
observing those little things.

Meg (06:46)
So a lot of the time my ideas simply come from that, from noticing random things in town around me, around my house, in my house.

Meg (06:56)
Ideas don't always arrive fully formed. Sometimes they're just observations waiting patiently.

Meg (07:04)
I want to shift a little bit and talk about my creative process. My ideas rarely begin as ideas. I am a naturally curious person. I always have been. Earlier in this episode, I mentioned, walking in the woods with a five-year-old and, you know, having it take forever because they notice everything. And I am also that way.

Meg (07:26)
When I go on walks with my family, my husband, it takes forever because I am also stopping to look at every mushroom, feel the moss, maybe on a a tree trunk. so it it it is very natural for me to, take my time, stop and and notice things and just generally be curious about things. And this again happens also.

Meg (07:52)
with my creative process and where my ideas come from. I notice things more than I definitely than I used to. And maybe that's also come with like age. I'm often not like actively seeking out these ideas. I often stumble on them, whether it's in town, maybe just some beautiful light at my mailbox in the evening, maybe something that

Meg (08:19)
my children do. An example would be my four-year-old putting his shoes on backwards every single time before he goes outside. That's a portrait idea. So, like noticing those things is incredibly important for me in my creative process as a photographer. I think that's really important. Ideas don't always arrive fully formed. Sometimes they're just observations waiting patiently.

Meg (08:46)
Recently I've stumbled on a couple of really cool locations in town. And it's funny because I've driven around these areas for many, many years and never noticed these locations. And then all of a sudden one day I just did. I wasn't seeking out a really cool environment to shoot. I just happened to notice it. I was like, my gosh, I need to come back to this location, this place, and shoot here.

Meg (09:11)
this would be a really cool environment to shoot in. So again, it's it's all about, you know, trying to slow down and observe the environment around me.

Meg (09:22)
I think there's some truth in that the world didn't just suddenly become more interesting. I had simply noticed something that I'd passed before again and again and again. I think most of my concepts didn't begin as concepts. They began as something I couldn't stop thinking about.

Meg (09:44)
That's also why two people can photograph the exact same subject and create something completely different. The subject isn't the interesting part, what each person notices about the subject is.

Meg (09:59)
I definitely think we have become obsessed with answers. And I am guilty of this too. We're always asking, what should I photograph? What lens should I buy? How do I grow? How do I edit? Maybe instead of that, the better question is: what keeps catching my attention?

Meg (10:21)
Because attention leaves clues. Maybe you keep photographing laundry or birds or windows or your kitchen or childhood in general. That isn't random. Those things are choosing you. You're drawn to those things for some reason.

Meg (10:40)
Here's the thing I really want to drive home. Maybe your artistic voice isn't something you need to invent. Maybe pieces of it are already sitting inside the things that you are repeatedly noticing.

Meg (10:53)
Pay attention to what keeps asking for your attention.

Meg (10:56)
So, how do we take time to observe in a world that glorifies busy? You don't have to photograph everything today. I think it's important to know that some ideas they need months to foster. Sometimes they need years.

Meg (11:12)
Some simply sit quietly until the story becomes clear. And this often happens for me. I have occasionally waited years before I've created something. Maybe because I couldn't get out to the location very easily, maybe because the concept itself hadn't fully developed yet, and I needed some more time to kind of

Meg (11:39)
Brainstorm and think through the idea. Maybe I went out and and shot something and it was a complete flop and failure. And I waited like another year until I tried it again. Done that before. so again, it's really important to know that, to understand that things do take time.

Meg (12:01)
And I think there's something really important in allowing yourself to notice something without immediately converting it into content.

Meg (12:12)
You don't have to post it. You don't have to photograph it. You don't even have to know why you're drawn to it yet. Not every observation needs to become a photograph. Sometimes it just needs to become part of you. You need time to sit with it and foster the idea. One thing that I do that's really good for me is I keep a running shooting list in my planner.

Meg (12:39)
So all my ideas, they go there. And if I don't have my planner with me at the time, then I put it in my phone. And then when I can get to my planner, I put it down in my planner. But that's typically where I jot down all my ideas, where I think through my ideas first.

Meg (12:57)
So here's my challenge for you this week. Leave your camera at home when you go for a walk. Or if you carry it, promise yourself no photographs for the very first 20 minutes.

Meg (13:13)
Just observe, notice colors, notice sounds, notice repeated objects or elements, notice what keeps pulling your attention, and maybe even try something children naturally do. Ask unnecessary questions. Why is that there? Who used it? What happened here? Why do I like this color so much? What does this remind me of?

Meg (13:41)
From my childhood, what would this look like at night?

Meg (13:45)
What if this object were somewhere it didn't belong? Because that is probably where your voice lives.

Meg (13:52)
I'm going to close with this. Maybe the most creative thing we can do isn't learn another editing trick or by another lens or chase another trend. But it's simply becoming better observers because the world has always been full of stories. The question isn't whether they're there. The question is whether we've slowed down long enough.

Meg (14:19)
To see them, to notice them.

Meg (14:21)
Maybe children understand this better than we do. They haven't yet learned which things aren't worth noticing.

Meg (14:27)
Maybe our job as artists is to unlearn that.

Meg (14:31)
The beautiful thing about observation is that it's not a talent reserved for a select few. It's a practice. We can choose to slow down. We can choose to become curious again. We can choose to notice. And I have a feeling that when we do, we'll find that the world is every bit as interesting as it was when we were children.

Meg (14:55)
As always, thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Stay tuned for the next one where I get to sit down and interview an icon with a lot to share.