I get lazy with looking.

I glance at things and think I’ve seen them.

It’s why the strapline for my photography Substack is “helping me to look, when there is seemingly nothing new to see.”

I was reminded of this while reading Martin Parr talking about his photo, Conservative Midsummer Madness Party, in the final book published before his death, Utterly Lazy and Inattentive.

It’s one of my favourite photos of his. It’s of a Conservative event in mid-80s Bath.

My eye is always first drawn to the expression of the woman in the foreground with her solid Thatcher-style hair. She looks like she has just been told something she disapproves of and gives a look that could curdle milk.

Then I move to the two men forming that little huddle men make at parties when they’ve found someone bearable to talk to.

But Martin Parr describes how all the components of the photo work and points to the lady’s pink sandal in the background.

I had never noticed it before.

It’s a reminder for me — when observation is such a key part of my professional role as a web designer and of my own photography — that there is always something new to see. That I can never spend enough time looking at the detail, making sure everything on a web page or a photograph flows and is there for a reason.

What’s the pink sandal you haven’t spotted?