Winter Pareidolia
What is pareidolia? It is the tendency to see faces and other objects in patterns or photographs. Rorschach’s inkblot test is based on this tendency.
It’s usually caused by the way light shines or reflects off of objects such as rocks, although it can also be caused by the actual shape of an object such as a cloud.
I experienced this tendency recently when I photographed a patch of ice on grass after a recent winter storm.
Northern Alabama, where we presently live, experienced a winter storm in January 2024 that produced a mix of snow and ice from sleet, freezing rain and snow. Although the temperatures stayed well below freezing for nearly a week, some of the frozen precipitation melted when the sun came out a day after the storm. The result was an abstracted, uneven layer of ice as that melted mix refroze.
The photograph that I took was a close up of that layer of ice sitting on top of the dormant grass. Light hitting the higher portions of ice made tiny sparkles as though a million diamonds had been scattered on the ground.
Enlarging the photograph revealed images within this shiny mass that resembled eyes looking out from the ice. Even without magnification you can spot the largest of these eyes towards the upper left side of the image as it is very blue with a sparkle shining within it.
How fun to end up with an image of ice that can also be considered and used as a puzzle. Instead of finding Waldo you can count how many eyes you find in the image!
Do you tend to see faces and eyes in nature? Please feel free to share your own experiences in the comment section.
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