July 1st 2026 – Written by Enorha Guimard
Learning to see again
For a long time, I believed that the wildest places were always somewhere else.
Perhaps it was the documentaries I watched as a child, the photographs filling my social media feeds, or the stories of distant adventures. I found myself drawn to remote islands, tropical oceans, and places where extraordinary wildlife seemed to exist around every corner.
As a wildlife lover, photographer, and storyteller, I wanted to experience those places for myself. And many of them were every bit as magical as I had imagined. But over the years, something unexpected happened. The more I travelled, the more I began to notice what had been right in front of me all along.
Social media has a remarkable ability to make us believe that wonder only exists somewhere far away. We are constantly shown whale sharks in turquoise lagoons, orangutans in ancient rainforests, or orcas swimming beneath snow-covered mountains. These experiences are incredible, but they can also create the illusion that wildlife is only worth noticing when it is rare, exotic, or far from home.
I have fallen into that trap myself. Growing up in Brittany, I never thought much about the wildlife around my family’s home. It was familiar, ordinary, easy to overlook.
Yet after years of travelling, photographing whales, and spending my life searching for wildlife, I began to see those places differently. In a surprising way, my Australian partner helped me realise this. Having grown up surrounded by wildlife, he would point out birds, insects, tracks, and small wonders that I had stopped noticing long ago at home. Things I had become blind to simply because they were always there.