{"id":17735,"date":"2013-08-23T04:00:59","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T10:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=17735"},"modified":"2013-08-22T18:06:50","modified_gmt":"2013-08-23T00:06:50","slug":"swainsons-hawk-optical-illusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/23\/swainsons-hawk-optical-illusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Swainson’s Hawk Optical Illusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Optical Illusion –\u00a0an experience of seeming to see something that does not exist or that is other than it appears<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When I first looked at this image of a Swainson’s Hawk (taken two weeks ago in the west desert of Utah)\u00a0my brain had a difficult time interpreting some of\u00a0the signals it was getting from my eyes.\u00a0 But I was in a hurry (I was in the middle of culling hundreds of images) so I stuck it in\u00a0the appropriate folder and decided to look at it more carefully later.\u00a0\u00a0 When\u00a0I did, the same thing happened again – my gray matter interpretive mechanisms\u00a0received some confusing visual cues.<\/p>\n

Before I take this any further I’d like you to take a look at the image for a moment and see if the same thing happens to you and then I’ll try to explain the mental gyrations my head went through to try to\u00a0interpret the image.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Each time I look at this image, at first the wing above the head appears to be the birds right wing on the far side of the body.\u00a0 But then a few seconds later my brain tells me that’s impossible because the lower wing is obviously the right wing and it’s impossible (or at least highly\u00a0unlikely) for the hawk to have two right wings.<\/p>\n

After a bit of study the source of the confusion became apparent – by devilish chance the curve of the left wing on the near side of the bird precisely\u00a0matched the curve of the body and the head behind it, which told my brain that the wing must be on the far side of the hawk, which it isn’t.\u00a0 Reality became more apparent when I eventually\u00a0let my eye follow the actual left wing to the rear where its\u00a0curve begins to\u00a0follow that of the body less precisely.<\/p>\n

It’s interesting that our brains make snap judgments about what our eyes see and\u00a0then sometimes have difficulty letting go of the original interpretation, even in the face of contradictory evidence on an intellectual level.\u00a0 Each and every time I look at this image I have to reevaluate what I’m actually\u00a0seeing.<\/p>\n

I’m curious to know\u00a0if this\u00a0photograph has the same effect on some or all of\u00a0my viewers or if it only happens to me.<\/p>\n

If so, it won’t be the first time that my synapses have fired to the beat of a different drummer…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each time I look at this image, at first the wing above the head appears to be the birds right wing on the far side of the body. But then a few seconds later my brain tells me that’s impossible because the lower wing is obviously the right wing and it’s impossible (or at least highly unlikely) for the hawk to have two right wings.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,334,645],"tags":[647,1621,646,311,533],"class_list":["post-17735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-optical-illusion","tag-swainsons-hawk","tag-utah-2","tag-west-desert"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/swainsons-hawk-5832-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4C3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}