"Taking pictures of the same things over and over can emphasize the rhythms of existence."

"Every evening, on the way home from work, I pass the same red-and-white fire hydrant, which is set into some reedy bushes on a little promontory overlooking a harbor. I often stop to take a picture of it: its red registers as warmer in summer and cooler in winter, and its white adopts the yellow of scorched grass in late summer and fall.... I think with some regularity of a remark made by the British-Irish comedian Jimmy Carr, who once told an interviewer that the meaning of life was 'enjoying the passage of time.' Everyday photography, with its implicit emphasis on what recurs, makes enjoying the passage of time a little easier.... [N]o, you’re not likely to wring transcendence out of the mundane on a regular basis. You can, however, learn something about yourself and your world by doing or attempting to do these things. Even amateur hour becomes golden hour, sometimes."

Writes Joshua Rothman, in "What Can You Learn from Photographing Your Life? Pictures of the mundane can capture much more" (The New Yorker).

I regularly go out at sunrise, and when I go, I always take photographs. But then I also, with almost equal regularity, go out for a second walk, and I rarely take photographs. But I did take one yesterday — the forest at noon: