Paul Lester Photo

The other day I was watching a documentary called: The Incredible Human Machine. One of the things that they talked about was vision. It was interesting how the brain works. The brain doesn’t always process what it actually sees, but rather what it ‘expects’ to see. The brain, it seems, likes short cuts, especially where motion is concerned. We see individual snapshots of things, but those things move so fast, it looks like motion to our brain; however, the brain will fill in what it expects to see rather than what really happened.

I’ve experienced this many times in my life. I remember when I bought my Toyota Camry. I had never really ‘seen’ a Phantom Grey Toyota Camry. The day that I bought mine, of course I saw a few more. Now, after having had my car for 7 years, that’s all that see. Seems like everybody has one. Of course, my brain can pick these out of the crowd, no problem.

And so it was today, I went back to the park, not expecting flowers to be available, intending to shoot the stream instead. After all, no flowers for another week, right? So, I concentrated on the stream. I was having a good time, the sun was getting lower in the sky and making nice stripes across the ground. As I walked along the trail, I thought that I’d have a look to see if I could see any wildflowers. Wait? What’s that in that shaft of sunlight? A wildflower. And *poof*, just like that … just like when I bought the Camry. Wildflowers appeared everywhere. This side of the trail, that side of the trail. All over the place!

I smiled, lowered my tripod, and set about shooting. There was plenty to shoot, but only one type of flower that I saw, but they were abundant! I’m glad that I had another look and that I know that my mind is not above playing tricks on me!

Finally, I thought that I’d steal a page from the book of Andreas and include a song: My mind is playing tricks on me – Ghetto Boys