Terretta's photostream  

Photojournalist manqué, sidetracked by the Internet...

The visual system ("VS") uses various "tricks" to compensate the effects of shadows, maintaining the continuity of the colours (perceptively, one does not stop seeing a certain colour when the surrounding light fades, even though, from the perspective of physics, the colour of a surface changes according to the light it receives). The VS is not a good measure of "physical data", but this is not its purpose. The main role of the VS is to decipher the information in the image and thus perceive the nature of the objects seen.

From this perspective, perception must be understood as a procedure for processing the information in the surrounding environment rather than a reflex of basic physics. Perception, therefore, involves a series of operations to transform, analyse, synthesise and activate knowledge.

Optical illusions generally use these operations, therefore it is unfair to say they "deceive" the system. On the contrary, we can assume that the VS, with its ability to perceive in a different way to what is shown by physical measurement, protects us rather than deceives us.

In general, optical illusions do not deceive us in our everyday interaction with our surroundings but rather they give us more appropriate knowledge to direct our behaviour. In short, it seems that it is to our advantage, and even necessary, that we "suffer" some of these illusions.

-- Mirages that don't deceive

create your own visited countries map



Current camera bag, newest to oldest:

Olympus XZ-1 (28mm - 112mm, f/1.8; 11 March 2011)
Nikon D3 (30 Nov 2007)
Lecia C-LUX 2
Leica C-LUX 1 (may replace Casio Exilim, but maybe too thick)
Nikon D200 (everyday shooter)
Sony DSC-T30 (7mp, great in low light, but 0.9" thick)
Nikon D2X (portraits, landscapes)
Casio Exilim EX-S500 (5mp, 3x optical zoom, only 0.5" thick)
Nikon D2H (sports)


Kill Smiley
For those times you just can't see another Flickr Smiley comments thread without wanting to club yourself over the head...

<img src="http://static.flickr.com/92/247961382_6e6eb87423_o.gif"
width="71" height="71" title="Kill Smiley" alt="Kill Smiley">

My Winner?
Too many little gold men in your comments? Try this one:

<img src="http://static.flickr.com/112/254167138_a8d135aa7b_t.jpg"
width="77"height="100" alt="My Winner" />