Urban & Travel Photography 101: Intuition

When it comes to making decisions in life, I mostly rely on my intuition. Sure, the first step towards a new direction may or may not be made out of pure rationality but the rest just happens because I trust and follow my intuition with people or situations. If the rational part of my brain says nah that’s not gonna happen, and my intuition tells me, go for it, I’ll definitely go for it. And here’s why!

Trust! It’s a simple five letter word, but it means the world when it comes to making decisions. Trust in yourself, your abilities, your decisions, your creativity. You know best what to do and when to do it, you just need to listen to that voice within you. But please, don’t get me wrong! Having trust in you and following your intuition doesn’t mean you should go out there and start doing things without having a clue or even without thinking about what your doing in the first place. Trust is all about knowledge, expertise and preparation but I’m not going to go too much into detail on that because this is going to be another topic. Let’s focus on intuition for now.

“Intuition, a phenomenon of the mind, describes the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason. The word “intuition” comes from the Latin verb intueri translated as “consider” or from the late middle English word intuit, “to contemplate”. Intuition is often interpreted with varied meaning from intuition being glimpses of greater knowledge to only a function of mind; however, processes by which and why they happen typically remain mostly unknown to the thinker, as opposed to the view of rational thinking.

Intuition […] is often misunderstood and misinterpreted as instinct, truth, belief, meaning and other subjects.” Thank you Wikipedia. But in my own words:

“Intuition is that inner voice of yours that tells you, go for it. It’s your curiosity and the excitement for the unknown that leads you. Let it lead you!”

Good question tho! I shot the image above when I was visiting a village named Tihany located on the half peninsula of Tihany in Hungary. On that day I decided to take a tour and accompany a guide and a couple of tourists, rather than exploring the village on my own. Lazy right? Anyways, actually it was a really chilled experience to be led around by a professional guide but after a while it got really boring to be honest, plus i hadn’t photograph anything exciting yet. So I decided to hang back a little and observe places and things we weren’t shown. But I wanted to stick with the group for a little longer and when we finally got to the last stop of our tour, well at least it was the last one for me, I took off. We headed to a church on top of a mountain from where you had a somewhat nice view over the lake Balaton. Don’t get me wrong, I like architecture and history and all that but by that time I simply had enough. And exploring the area around me in hopes of finding a nice place to rest, was just too appealing.

Throughout the whole time on top of that mountain, I wanted to take pictures of the lake. The water just had this wonderful color. But not only that I wasn’t able to figure out the right angle to shoot from, the whole place was also completely crowded and the spots i possibly would have gotten a better view from, were made inaccessible. So I decided to jump into the bushes and sneak my way through towards a cliff. The view from up there was simply amazing and well, I took my shot.

A little fun fact: while I was taking a break, sitting on that cliff, I saw a tiny hummingbird flying right next to me. I’ve actually never seen one before! It was amazing. Did you know that they were so cute and tiny?!

Okay. To make a long but exciting story short: My intuition told me to stay with the group a little longer, so I did it. My intuition told me to take off and walk my own path, so I did it. My intuition also told me where to find the perfect spot to shoot a unique picture and take a rest, you guessed it, I went there and I did it! And on top of that I saw a hummingbird for the first time. *sigh

Trust! Your! Intuition! It’s going to lead you exactly where you need to be. Even if there’s nothing to discover at first, take your time and look again, you might find something else. Something special and completely unexpected. And in the end, experiencing something unexpected always makes a good story, right?

So, what’s your story? What did you experience the last time you trusted your intuition? Feel free to share your story below in the comment section!