{"id":60707,"date":"2018-06-29T05:24:50","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T11:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=60707"},"modified":"2018-06-29T10:11:49","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T16:11:49","slug":"short-eared-owl-an-ambiguous-illusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/29\/short-eared-owl-an-ambiguous-illusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Short-eared Owl – An Ambiguous Illusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

I needed a stress reliever and this post is it.<\/p>\n

My stress level has been incredibly high for the last few days because of a serious\u00a0medical scare and I don’t handle\u00a0even\u00a0routine stress well so I’ve been a basket case. Even though we’ve had good weather lately I haven’t gone out shooting if that tells you anything…<\/p>\n

A phone call from my doctor late yesterday afternoon informed me that my\u00a0ominous test results had cleared up and I “shouldn’t worry about it”. What a relief! So\u00a0last night\u00a0while I was preparing this post I decided to make it a light-hearted one in celebration since going out on the town and getting plastered\u00a0wasn’t an option (I may have posted a similar illusion to this one sometime in the past – can’t remember for sure).<\/p>\n

This one has to do with illusions of a\u00a0particular type called “ambiguous Illusions”, defined as “pictures or objects that elicit a perceptual ‘switch’ between alternative interpretations”. I’ve included two famous ambiguous illusions below as examples:<\/p>\n

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Public Domain<\/em><\/p>\n

This one is often called “my wife and my mother-in-law” for obvious reasons when you see it switch back and forth between an attractive\u00a0young\u00a0lady and an old woman.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Public Domain<\/em><\/p>\n

This one is referred to as the “impossible trident” or the “devil’s tuning fork”, again for obvious reasons when your eye tries to follow the prongs from one end to the other. I’m sure all of my readers have seen both of them before but you haven’t seen the one below. That one is mine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I photographed this young Short-eared Owl parallaxing me two years ago in northern Utah. Just looking at the severe tilt of this adorable creature’s head amused me, even before I spotted the illusion. Obviously it’s looking straight at\u00a0the viewer\u00a0with its almost upside down head and eyes but if you look at the photo for say 10 seconds or so it switches. Suddenly its head isn’t upside down and the tilt is far less severe as\u00a0the owl seems to look down toward the lower right corner of the frame instead of at the viewer.<\/p>\n

Like some other illusions it may not work for everyone all the time but if you give it a shot I’ll bet it eventually\u00a0does. I think it’s fun when it switches.<\/p>\n

I hope it works for you and if you have any stress in your life I hope it takes some of the edges off. It\u00a0did for me and believe me\u00a0I needed it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – I enjoyed one of the first comments on this post on Facebook\u00a0from my\u00a0friend Muffy S. Gately. She\u00a0said “Who knew that owls have a beak on their forehead?”<\/em><\/p>\n

PSS – And here’s something I found interesting. When I look at a smaller version of this photo (the thumbnail on Facebook for example) I always see the illusion first and have to struggle to see reality…<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I needed a stress reliever and this post is it. My stress level has been incredibly high for the last few days because of a serious medical scare and I don’t handle even routine stress well.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60711,"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":[5,334,356],"tags":[4079,35,2346,4081,4080,279],"class_list":["post-60707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-short-eared-owls","tag-ambiguous-illusion","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-illusion","tag-impossible-trident","tag-my-wife-and-my-mother-in-law","tag-short-eared-owl"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/short-eared-owl-3879-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-fN9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60707","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=60707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}