Bridge Face

What could be better than a face on a bridge?

I took this photo in Glasgow in 2012, and it happened to scroll by on the Big Guy’s screen-saver just now. Glancing at it from across the room, I saw a face I had never noticed before. With an imposing columnar nose, to boot.

I think that’s how most of these faces appear: A glance-in-passing triggers that pattern-recognition doohickey in the subconscious.

Pareidolia - bridge

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10 Responses to Bridge Face

  1. I had to narrow my eyes to a squint to appreciate this face. Seeing it from across the room works even better. The ironwork makes me think of a suit of armour, no doubt prompted by the shields. It was an impressive bridge to begin with; now, it speaks, starting with a “Harrumph!”

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Laurna – It’s funny. Sometimes I crop a photo to show where the face is, but find that this loses some context (or something) that makes the face visible/noticeable. It’s possible to get too close . . .

  2. I can see how the cropping would entail a sense of your own associations with the purported “face” and how much the surroundings can contribute to it. You have given me many memorable such images. I do try to avoid seeing faces in my own environment or I should be distracted constantly. The face in a dresser of my parents haunted me as a child so that I “felt it as a presence” whenever I walked into the room. I was in my teens before I could shed that feeling.

  3. barbara carlson says:

    Rather a rabbit in the headlights!

    Or wide-eyed stare and a froggy-mouthed reaction to 3 more years!?

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Barbara – Well, let’s hope she was counting from the start of *this* year . . . Or, she could be wrong. There’s been lots of that going around.

  4. John Whitman says:

    Isabel – you see a long columnar nose. I see a thin moustache below the nose with a row of teeth below the moustache that badly need cleaning.

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      John – 🙂 Maybe we should send a note to the Glasgow public works department to get out there and brush up/off their bridges.

      • John Whitman says:

        Still haven’t figured out what the green fuzz is on the moustache on the left side of the ‘face’. Any hints?

        • Isabel Gibson says:

          John – A plant. 🙂 No idea which plant specifically, but I’m always amazed at how little soil plants seem to need (if any). They often appear to be growing out of a crack in a rock that allows water to accumulate – and not much more.

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