The Color Walk: A Small Practice in Slowing Down

Last week, I went for a walk with one job: find yellow 🌟

Not 'notice pretty things' or 'Take some photos to post on socials'. Just yellow. Wherever it showed up; a hydrant, crosswalk sign, excavator, leaves. I stopped & photographed each one.

It's called a color walk & the idea is embarrassingly simple. You pick a color. You go for a walk. Find that color. Capture it. Thats the whole practice! No real goal beyond paying attention to one single thing.

I wasn't prepared for how much yellow was out there once I actually went looking for it. So many things I'd typically walk right by, or have a million times, and never noticed. 

Where did all the color go?

Here's the thing that got mye thinking, though. So much of what we look at everyday has quietly drained itself of color. It's not that any of it is 'ugly'. It's that it's safe. Curated. Predictable in a way that starts to feel less like taste and more like default. And when everything defaults to the same neutral colors, it gets easy to believe that's just what the world looks like now. Muted. Filtered. A little flat.

But it isn't. The color never left. We just stopped looking for it!! That's the whole quiet argument of a color walk. It doesn't ask you to create beauty or curate it into something Instagram-worthy. It just asks you to notice what's already there in front of you. Sitting in plain sight, waiting for someone to slow down enough to see it. 

Intention changes what you see!

I gave my friend a different assignment: light blue. He came back with what felt like a hundred photos. Not because light blue is rare, (it's everywhere too, once you're looking) but because he said he genuinely loved doing it! This was music to my ears. There is something almost meditative about walking with a single, small purpose. No overthinking. No pressure. Just: is this the color? Yes? Stop. Look. Capture it. Keep walking.

I love that he recognized that feeling.

That's the heart of it. Give yourself one narrow, specific intention, and the whole walk changes. You're not just moving from point A to point B anymore. You're paying attention. And paying attention, even to something as small as a color, has a way of pulling you back into the present in a way that scrolling never will.

It's the same principle I lean into with everything at OrgaNick. That slowing down long enough to notice, to choose your words, to choose your colors, is where the meaning actually lives. A color walk is just that idea taken outside, onto the sidewalk, into the ordinary parts of your day you'd normally walk right past.

You should try it yourself. 

If you want to give it a go, it's about as low-stakes as a creative practice gets:

1. Pick a color. Any color. Something common enough that you'll actually find it, or something a little more unusual if you want a challenge (mint, mustard, coral).
2. Go for a walk. No destination required. Your neighborhood, a park, even just around the block.
3. Look for your color. Flowers, signs, doors, cars, chalk on the sidewalk; it can be absolutely anything!!
4. Take a picture every time you find it. Don't overthink the composition. This isn't about the perfect shot. It's about the noticing.
5. See what you end up with. More often than not, you'll be surprised by how much of "your" color was hiding in plain sight the whole time.

Send me allll the pictures you take if you decide to participate!!