Be Careful What You Wish For!

Car Park, Falmouth.

For me a bright sunny day and a car park are matches made in heaven. I enjoy graphic compositions, they’re definitely different to the work I make mostly. What I really enjoy is the change in seeing, adapting how I welcome images into my day depending on light, weather, time of day and equipment I am using. There will be those who would suggest cleaning the image up but for me the makes, scrapes and flaws in the white wall are part of the truth of the location.

Hi,

Last week I wrote about imposter syndrome, that annoying voice that tells you you’re not a good enough photographer, not yet, maybe not ever. I received a number of emails that expressed the same thing in different words: I don’t feel like I’m allowed to want good things for my work. I don’t feel like I’m allowed to expect it to go well.

This week I want to talk about the other side of that coin. Manifestation.

I know, I know. Paul has gone woo woo, I can hear your eyes rolling! Bear with me. The word comes loaded with vision boards, crystals, candles and people telling you to just “raise your vibration” and the universe will hand you a Nikon deal. That’s not what I mean, and it’s not something I ever believe in, not like that at least.

But there is something that looks a lot like manifestation once you strip the mysticism out of it, and I recently realised that I’ve been teaching a version of it in my newsletter, workshops and the book without ever calling it that.

Let me take you back to 1983. I was at school, I’d fallen in love with photography, and I decided that I wanted to be a photographer. I set my heart on it without the knowledge, the contacts or the skills to even begin. Decades later, here I still am working as a photographer.

When I started in news photography in 1991, I made a small list of things I wanted to achieve: front pages of the nationals, a staff job, and a slightly ridiculously over reaching shooting for the stars fantasy wish, becoming Picture Editor of The Times (be careful what you wish for - although I am grateful for what that role gave me).

I got all of it. I don’t think that was luck. I think it was attention, and commitment, and a lot of faith.

As a news photographer you learn quickly to pay attention to the story: the who, the what, the why you’re actually there. Get those details right and you nearly always come away with what the editors need. That was always how I worked, understand why you’re there, work around it, and the picture tends to follow. The days I went out without that understanding were, without fail, the days I fell flat on my face.

There’s an exercise in my book, Still: A Mindful Practice for Photographers, where I ask you to sit quietly, settle on a feeling, and turn that feeling into a colour. Then you spend the day watching for that colour everywhere you go. In the book I chose red, but any colour works, even a very specific one.

Every time I’ve done this, the same thing happens, the colour turns up everywhere. Not because I’ve somehow willed it into existence, but because I’ve told my attention what to look for and attention, once you give it something to do, tends to get on with the job rather well.

That’s the whole trick of manifestation, as far as I can tell. It was never about wishing something into being. It’s about deciding, with intention, what you’re going to notice, and living with that decision long enough that your eye starts finding it everywhere.

I don’t think the photographers who always seem to get lucky, who always seem to be in the right place, are lucky at all. I think they’ve simply told their attention what matters to them, so consistently and for so long, that they can’t help but walk towards it.

As the first part is about attention the second part of this is about language. I’ve written about it before, because I think it matters more than people realise. We talk about photography aggressively. We shoot. We capture. We take pictures.

Go out to take something and you arrive tense, grasping a little, half braced for disappointment if the light isn’t quite perfect. Where as if you go out to receive something and you arrive open instead, not owed anything, but available for whatever might be offered.

That simple shift, from taking to receiving, changes the way you spend your time with a camera. A person who’s hunting sees less than a person who’s simply curious and waiting to be shown something. If manifestation means anything useful at all, I think it’s that: showing up often enough, openly enough, that you become the kind of person things arrive for.

None of this works as a one-off, though.

Julia Cameron, whose book The Artist’s Way has shaped a lot of my own practice over the years, talks about morning pages, a few handwritten pages of whatever’s rattling around your head, done first thing, every single day, no editing, no audience. The point isn’t really the writing. The point is showing up for yourself before the rest of the world gets a chance to steal your attention.

That’s manifestation too, and it’s a far less glamorous version of it than a vision board. It’s a small, unremarkable, repeated act of turning up for your own creativity before anyone’s asked you to. Do it for long enough and belief tends to follow. It isn’t that you’ve talked yourself into anything, it’s that you’ve built up a track record with yourself that you actually trust.

So here’s my challenge to you this week, and it’s meant to be fun, not homework.

Pick a single word for what you want more of in your photography right now. Not a subject, a quality: stillness, courage, softness, connection, authenticity, joy, whatever’s true for you.

Every day this week, before you pick up your camera, write one line by hand about being open to finding that quality today. Don’t plan the photograph, just be open and fully attentive as you go through the day. Be prepared to receive it in unexpected places.

At the end of the week, have a look back at what you’ve made. I’d put money on there being more of that quality in your pictures than there’s been in weeks, and I don’t think it will feel like luck. I think it’ll feel like something you built, one small act of attention at a time.

Thank you for your time today

Paul

An Invitation to Pause: Autumn, Stillness and the Art of Making.

Be guided through a day of mindful photography & the meditative process of Japanese Stab Binding, taking the handcrafted keepsake away.

September 30th 2026 0930 - 1700

More Information and Booking

My first book “Still - a mindful practice for photographers” has been on sale for a couple of months now and is listed as a bestseller on Amazon and Waterstones in the UK - which I still can’t believe. The feedback has been incredible, I am so grateful to everyone who has ordered a copy. If you don’t have a copy yet it is on sale in most good bookshops and via numerous online book retailers too.

There is a German version too and in the US it is available from all good bookstores and The Getty Museum

“More than a photography book, Still is a must-have guide for anyone seeking calm and clarity in their creative life.”