While photographing this particular piece of pietersite, I couldn’t help notice a section of it that resembled a waterfall. . It seems to happen that way when we view abstracts. Our minds try to make sense of it by trying to associate what we are seeing with something familiar. . Normally just some interesting patterns are enough to make me want to photograph them. . But in this case, I couldn’t see anything BUT a waterfall. . It actually affected some of the compositions I was making, because I felt the need for the areas that look like water to be flowing downward. . . I even tried to break that perception by slipping the stone around in various ways, but nothing else seemed to ‘look right.’. . . So I succumbed to what my brain was telling me and made the arrangements look like segments of a waterfall.
Thanks very much folks.
Hi Mark, these are absolutely wonderful images Mark. I definitely see the waterfalls and yet the images are wonderfully abstracted as well. Beautiful work – looks you are getting a very nice series of stone images. Keep it up! Very creative…
Funny I was thinking about something similar… again… while walking to my car the other day. I saw a cloud that I swear looked like a kangaroo. The brain is an interesting organ. Funny how we make such associations. I very much see the waterfall and can understand how you got stuck on seeing it as well.
Mark, it’s amazing what we discover if we look closely, isn’t it? I love this image. It was there all along, waiting for you to find it.
Beautiful work Mark, I definitely can see the falls in the abstract rock, great vision !!
My husband is a psychology professor (on the experimental side, not the clinical,) who specializes in neural biology & function. As such, he’s tremendously interesting to speak to about such things. The brain LIKES the familiar & also has a tendency to look for faces where none exist (like in the bark of a tree, etc.) Interesting thing, the brain!
Neat photos Mark and it is amazing how we see things in abstract patterns. My wife loves to find objects in the clouds. One of my favorite things to look at is knots on old oak trees often growing in peculiar ways.
Thanks Richard, thanks Mike.
Hey Mark, this one in very cool.
That is impressive Mark, very painterly. I would have seen a waterfall too if I hadn’t read what you wrote.
Thank you for the comment Petra. I think you are right – and we definitely have a very primal association with water! One other thing I did notice is the dimensional depth increases when you have this association in mind. I immediately begin to see a mini-landscape in these patterns.
Mark – of course this is a waterfall. Our brain is programmed to identify known images immediately in a split second before we can decide what this could be. I think this is a relict from evolution that helps us to realize per instinct whether something is dangerous and life threatening or not. It is imprinted whether we want it to be that way or not.
Thus the association of a stone image with a waterfall.
Btw – beautiful images again. And what could that blue colour be anything different than water? Amazing – these minerals.