‘Can you see the human figures?‘

What else can you see?

I arrived at parkrun this morning in time to do a proper warm-up. The latter part included some stretching, and today’s blip is a photograph of something that caught my eye just as I was getting into a comfortable position.

One of my favourite spots for stretching is beside a tree stump near the start that I can use to hold onto. It’s old and has been partly dismembered and - more recently - badly charred too, by being used as a shelter for a barbecue.

I’ve always been a bit fascinated by the process of dereliction and destruction, and this tree trunk provided a hidden gem!

Its a part of one of the dismembered sections (see also extra for context), and I immediately spotted a human figure, then two, an animal, then a big bird, then a hat, which then disappeared and came back again:- a class of illusion called ‘ambiguous figures’ 

It reminded me of the well-known ‘Young Woman Old Woman Ambiguous Figure, which “belongs in a large class of illusions where a two-dimensional figure, or three-dimensional object can be seen in two or more sharply distinct ways.” 

There are many examples of ambiguous figures, which you can search for in this illusions index in the above link!

Or maybe it is just an example of Pareidolia, seeing something where nothing exists - a bit like the famous Rorschach Inkblot test - where what you see says more about you!

What can you see?