“Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before.”

Neil Gaiman

Why are we so afraid of making mistakes? It is so ingrained in our upbringing that mistakes could lead to potentially catastrophic consequences that we takes pains to avoid them. Often to the extent of avoiding situations that may possible lead to a mistake.

But mistakes can also be great catalysts for growth and learning, both in a public setting and within our own minds. By discovering that a particular course of action does not lead to the outcome you were intending, you are one step closer to another that will. By inadvertantly hurting someones’ feelings, we have a strong and visceral lesson about how we should behave in the future. (more…)

 “When you look closely at anything familiar, it kind of transmogrifies into something unfamiliar — the sort of cognitive version of saying your name again and again and again, or a word again and again and again, and getting a different sound of it after you’ve repeated it forty times.”

Alexandra Horowitz

Great photographs have the ability to make you see a familar subject with fresh perception, and to bring meaning and connections to the ordinary. This is in part because they capture a moment in time, stripping unnecessary detail away from the image, and leaving the viewer to contemplate the subject and composition for only what is shown. This is a technique that landscape architects also use to direct the experience of users within a space. (more…)