When I say photographers see the world differently, we truly do! Do you see faces everywhere? I definitely do - and I'm not talking about faces in Rorschach tests - faces in everyday items!
Can you see the faces? I see faces so often, I have passed it down to my daughter and we challenge each other to "find the faces", and even use their expressions to create a backstory for them!
Seeing faces in everyday objects is actually a common psychological phenomenon called "pareidolia". One of the more famous episodes was when Diane Duyser saw the Virgin Mary in her grilled cheese in 2004 (and sold it in 2014 for $28,000 as a pop culture icon!) It is unknown why some people can see faces and others cannot, but some scientists believe it indicates a neurotic person (not sure if that is a good thing for me or not!). Other theories indicate a connection with survival.
Carl Sagan has theorized that throughout time, infants that were able to recognize faces smiled back more, which led them to be closer to their caregivers. This, in turn, created a stronger bond, and provided these children a better chance to survive and prosper.
Christopher French also believes the phenomenon developed due to survival, but specifically to provide protection from predators. Even back to the Stone Age, if a person saw (or imagined) a predator in the bushes, they would run away, surviving to live another day!
It is also believed that women may experience this more than men, since they have a better ability to recognize emotions through facial expressions. With this reasoning, maybe this is a good trait for a photographer to have - allowing us to process emotions better and see the perfect shot coming before it happens!
Have you found any faces throughout your day? If you would like to share, I would love to see them! Feel free to share by replying to this post in any of my social media feeds (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), or reply to this blog post!
Cheers and happy hunting (you know you're going to go look now!).
Josh
This is a peripheral drift illusion. The image is actually NOT moving.
Don't believe me?
Focus directly on one of the "moving" dots for a few seconds.
Did everything stop?
This is just one way to show how our brains are working to help us make sense of the world, oftentimes without us knowing. In this case, the different white shading on the edges of the circles tricks the brain a bit.Thankfully, most of the time, our brains are more accurate than with this example!