And today’s word is: Pareidolia.It is not a word that I have come across before, and the computer’s dictionary does not believe that it exists. But it does.
I suppose that many of you have wondered what word to use to describe the people who have claimed to have seen the face of Jesus in a pile of rice crispies or the name of Allah in a cut tomato. Apart, that is, from nutters. Bed time will have been a place of torment that night as you struggle to find the mot juste to describe the sad faith of gullible folk happy to share their unthinking belief in the vain hope that it will convert others to their sanguine religions.
Sleep soundly from now on. The word which just failed to work its way into your conscious mind was, of course, pareidolia.
I suppose that many of you have wondered what word to use to describe the people who have claimed to have seen the face of Jesus in a pile of rice crispies or the name of Allah in a cut tomato. Apart, that is, from nutters. Bed time will have been a place of torment that night as you struggle to find the mot juste to describe the sad faith of gullible folk happy to share their unthinking belief in the vain hope that it will convert others to their sanguine religions.
Sleep soundly from now on. The word which just failed to work its way into your conscious mind was, of course, pareidolia.
Wikipedia (an ever present help in time of information trouble) defines pareidolia as “a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus being mistakenly perceived as recognizable. This is the word which describes seeing images or faces in the clouds and can explain some (if not all) of the religious apparitions of holy folk in beetroot stains in a pair of underpants, clouds, sheep’s wool, cut tomatoes, shadows, indeed anything which can be ‘interpreted’ by an inventive mind.
Wikipedia goes on to suggest that “Human beings are ‘hard wired’ from birth to identify the human face. This allows people to use only minimal details to recognize faces” in virtually anything. And not only faces, but also dogs, as the famous spot picture demonstrate.
The full extent of peoples craving for evidence from the distant god that he/she/it is all around us and working with chocolate bar manufacturers to stamp his image in random cross sections for example, is too depressing to tabulate, but if you are interested then you could do worse that look at this web site:
Wikipedia goes on to suggest that “Human beings are ‘hard wired’ from birth to identify the human face. This allows people to use only minimal details to recognize faces” in virtually anything. And not only faces, but also dogs, as the famous spot picture demonstrate.The full extent of peoples craving for evidence from the distant god that he/she/it is all around us and working with chocolate bar manufacturers to stamp his image in random cross sections for example, is too depressing to tabulate, but if you are interested then you could do worse that look at this web site:
I have to admit that this site does have a fairly obvious agenda, but it makes for interesting reading nevertheless.
All of this is to justify the photo which is at the head of this article.
I am still in the process of getting to know my camera: a Casio Exilim EZ-Z1000 a 10.1 mega pixel monster that can fit comfortably in my shirt pocket!
Flowers, unlike for example, herons, do not move about when you get anywhere near them and very few flowers in my experience have flown away from the questing lens! The close up in focus is the one thing which is very difficult to achieve with a compact camera, so I am more than delighted with some of the results that I have obtained from this machine.
I can also see why photographers take hundreds of photos so that they can come up with one or two decent shots. I am not claiming to be a photographer (with a compact camera who but an idiot would claim to be?) but I am seeing that selection is the most interesting and difficult part of the photographic process. See, even with a compact camera, I am trying to get into the way of thinking! I was always able to kid myself along to keep myself warm when the cold light of reality came biting.
So, what I have produced is a photographic essay of two shots which demonstrate the principle of pareidolia.
All of this is to justify the photo which is at the head of this article.
I am still in the process of getting to know my camera: a Casio Exilim EZ-Z1000 a 10.1 mega pixel monster that can fit comfortably in my shirt pocket!
Flowers, unlike for example, herons, do not move about when you get anywhere near them and very few flowers in my experience have flown away from the questing lens! The close up in focus is the one thing which is very difficult to achieve with a compact camera, so I am more than delighted with some of the results that I have obtained from this machine.
I can also see why photographers take hundreds of photos so that they can come up with one or two decent shots. I am not claiming to be a photographer (with a compact camera who but an idiot would claim to be?) but I am seeing that selection is the most interesting and difficult part of the photographic process. See, even with a compact camera, I am trying to get into the way of thinking! I was always able to kid myself along to keep myself warm when the cold light of reality came biting.
So, what I have produced is a photographic essay of two shots which demonstrate the principle of pareidolia.
And there aren’t many blogs which do that!
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