Urban Nature and Wellbeing: Why Even a Tree Outside Your Door Can Change Your Life
On slowing down with a film camera, empathy, and why presence is not a luxury
We talk a lot about screen time, about digital detox, about being more present. But we rarely talk about what presence actually gives u. And what its absence costs us.
When I started going to Allan Gardens every week with my film camera, I wasn't thinking about any of this. I was just doing a photography project. But somewhere in those 52 weeks, something shifted.
Working with film means you can't scroll through your photos on a digital screen. There's no instant feedback loop, no urge to adjust and reshoot immediately. You make more thoughtful choices about your composition, what attracts your eye because you’ve slowed yourself down. You press the shutter and then you move on.
That constraint, which felt like a limitation at first, turned out to be the most important part of the practice.
It created what I'd call empathy, not just for the plants and the space, but for myself. Empathy is really just a deep curiosity about something other than your own immediate needs. When you slow down enough to notice how a palm frond bends in a particular light, or how the conservatory smells different in February than in October, you're practicing a kind of attention that extends outward into the rest of your life.
There's a study I keep coming back to. Researchers found that people who live within 100 metres of a tree in the city are significantly less likely to be prescribed antidepressants. The sample was 10,000 people, and the effect held across socioeconomic groups. You don't have to go to a conservatory. You don't have to have photography practice. You just have to be near something living, and notice it.
Scrolling creates moments. They are brief, disconnected flashes of stimulation. But it doesn't create a connection. Connection comes from sustained attention, from sitting with something long enough and you observe how it reveals itself to you.
The conservatory taught me that. I'm still learning to stay in the moment and present. It has been a lifelong process and anyone can start it. You don’t need anything special other than the desire to try it.