Every year, for spring nature photography, I find myself back in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. A place I return to season after season, not because I have to, but because I’m drawn there, sometimes with a few days and no agenda, sometimes with just a stolen sunrise before my naturalist classes start. There’s a familiarity to it, but it never feels routine. If anything, it feels like a slow unraveling, like each year I notice a little more, understand a little more, and find myself connecting to the land in a deeper way.

Yet, somehow, every single year, photographing those same locations still surprise me.

The Rhythm of Expectation and Surprise

You would think that wouldn’t be the case. After enough visits, after enough time spent walking through the same forests and wading into the same streams, visiting the same spots, we would expect the patterns. We come to anticipate the timing of certain flowers and trees, how the season unfolds.

But man oh man, Mother Nature likes to play by her own rules.

Spring rarely arrives in a way that feels predictable, even when we know exactly what’s coming. It moves quickly, often abruptly to our human senses, and unless we’re paying attention, it can feel like it happened all at once.

Every year, I notice the same thing. I’ll be out hiking or standing somewhere in observation longer than I planned to, and my brain will send the official message that spring has arrived: “Weren’t these trees just bare?”

The spring blooms feel like they happen overnight.

One week, the forest branches are stark and quiet, with last season’s leaves still carpeting the ground. The next, there’s a soft, sprouting haze of green beginning to form. And then, before you’ve really had time to process it, the canopy fills in completely and the mornings are crackling with birdsong, and there I am again, standing there a little slack-jawed like it didn’t just happen the exact same way last year.

I notice it every single year, and yet at the same time, every year it still takes me by surprise.

When That Observation Becomes Something More

After that moment of surprise that shouldn’t be a surprise, it’s always followed by the same realization, how did that happen so fast?

It’s a simple observation, but it never stays contained to just the trees. It becomes about everything. About how quickly things change in life, even when it doesn’t feel like anything is changing from day to day. That strange contradiction we all recognize, where the days can feel long, but the years move quickly, and somehow, with each passing year, I feel it more strongly as I reflect upon the magic that is spring.

You look around, and what felt like the beginning of something is suddenly already in full swing, and you start to wonder how much of it you actually noticed while it was happening.

Life has a way of filling itself up. There are always responsibilities, things that need our attention, tasks, meetings, and chores that keep everything moving forward.

I catch myself saying it multiple times throughout the year, “I just need to get through this week and things will slow down.” And every time, they don’t. Nothing has really slowed down for me, and I’m not sure I actually believe it will anymore. And if that’s the case, if things aren’t going to slow down on their own, then the only way we stay connected to it is by choosing to step into it. And the camera has become my most reliable way of breaking that cycle, even if only for twenty minutes.

Spring reminds me of that. Time is moving forward, and things are never going to really settle. There will always be something next, something else to take care of, something else to focus on.

The ReAwakening

And that’s why spring hits differently, and deeper, for me each season.

Because nature doesn’t wait. It doesn’t slow down so we can catch up or notice it more fully. The buds open, the leaves fill in, the light shifts, and the season moves forward whether we’re paying attention or not.

Not in a heavy or overwhelming way, but in a clear one.

A reminder that life is happening right now, that this moment, whatever it looks like, is part of something moving forward whether we choose to engage with it or not. For me, this is what photography has always been. Not just creating images, but a way of participating in what’s happening around me instead of just moving through it, a way of stepping back into that awareness in a simple, tangible way, even when life is trying to pull me in a hundred other directions.

Not in a way that requires perfect conditions or a well-thought-out plan, but in the simple act of being outside, being present, and paying attention.

Following my curiosity long enough to see where it leads. Sitting with my boredom until something develops, and yes, it’s usually ICM (intentional camera movement), because apparently that’s where my brain goes when left unsupervised. Asking myself a lot of questions that start with “what if,” what if I slow down the shutter speed, what if I change my perspective. Letting myself stay a little longer than originally intended and giving my full attention to something small in nature just to see what unfolds.

It doesn’t have to be a big outing or a full day set aside. Sometimes it’s just a few minutes to myself each morning. Sometimes it’s just enough time to remind myself that I’m allowed to be part of this, not just move through it.

Time is moving, quietly and consistently. And if we’re not careful, we can spend so much of it waiting for the right moment to begin that we miss the fact that we’re already in it.

Spring is my increasingly insistent reminder to be present, to pay attention to what’s changing around me, and to let myself be part of it while it’s happening. Some of those moments are the ones we plan for, the full days where we go out with our camera and give ourselves the time to slow down and really see. And some of them happen in an instant, when the light shifts, fog rolls through the backyard, or something unexpected appears and we only have a few seconds to respond. Both matter. Both are part of how we experience life through photography. And that doesn’t always look the same.

Photographing Fast and Slow

And if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that both of these ways of photographing matter, the fast, reactive moments and the slower, more intentional ones.

Sometimes that looks like dropping everything because a fox appears in the backyard. Then, you have about five seconds to grab your camera and be ready before it decides it has better things to do and disappears like it was never there in the first place. I’ve learned to keep my camera batteries charged for exactly that reason, because those moments don’t wait.

Other times, it’s the opposite. It’s carving out an entire day to go out and meander, to move slowly, to follow curiosity wherever it decides to take you, even if that ends up being nowhere in particular, because those are often the days where you actually start to see more.

And then there’s the in-between, which is probably where most of life actually happens. It’s setting aside a little extra time for a sunrise before the day gets going, fully aware you’re going to have to cut it short and hustle to get where you need to be on time, but choosing to go anyway because those small windows add up more than we realize.

I’ve done that more times than I can count heading into class at the Tremont Institute, squeezing in whatever time I could with my camera before shifting gears for the day. And somehow those moments stick just as much as the longer, more “planned” ones.

Over time, I’ve realized this isn’t really about choosing between fast photography and slow photography. The real question is whether we’re making room for both kinds of experiences. Some moments ask us to carve out time, wander, and pay attention. Others appear unexpectedly and ask us to respond before they’re gone. Both are valuable, and both deserve a place in our photographic lives.

Because this season, this moment, this version of me won’t stay the same for long. And neither will the chance to experience it while it’s here, camera in hand.