Right side up or upside down? You decide.

There’s a story—maybe true, maybe not—that after General Cornwallis surrendered to the Americans at Yorktown in 1781, the British band played the song “The World Turned Upside Down.” That’s a good lead-in to today’s picture from Southeast Metropolitan Park on February 11th. While I was processing the photograph of the choppy water (thanks, breeze), the thought came to me that a person viewing the picture would be hard-pressed to decide if it’s right side up or upside down. With that it mind, I’ve presented it both ways. Take a minute and see if you can you tell which one matches reality and which one has been rotated 180°.

This prompts the linguist in me to ask two other questions. Why does English fuse the up and the side in upside down but keep the right separate from the side in right side up (or hyphenate it)? And why does English normally say upside down rather than the synonymous downside up? Google’s Ngram viewer shows that in 2018 upside down occurred about 1500 times as often as downside up.

Do you think you’ve figured out which version of the photograph is the correct one? To find out, scroll on down. Let me know if you got it right or wrong.

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Call the picture at the top topsy turvy. The second version of the photograph is the one that is true.

And now I’ve reminded myself of the great comedic routine
in which the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

Rainbow or nebula?

You know those optical illusions where a drawing or design can be seen in different ways; this isn’t exactly one of those. And it’s also not quite like those works by Escher in which one thing gets transformed into another. Still, this photograph has elements of both of those: going from bottom to top, lily pads with a rainbow above them give way to a nebula in the night sky.

Here’s the story. On July 14th (Bastille Day), I was on the Burnet Rd. side of the Domain complex and discovered a pond with two fountains shooting water to good heights. The morning was clear, so sunlight refracting through the sprays of water created two rainbows. I set out to photograph each one along with the heavy splashing of the water as it rained back into the pond and moved sideways at the will of the wind. In the picture above I serendipitously got more than I bargained for.

Below, in a crop from a different frame, you get a closer look at the effect of the splashing water I was originally after, photographed at 1/800 of a second. Click to enlarge and see more details.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Shadow as an emblem of a bird in flight

Along the North Walnut Creek Trail on the morning of September 19th I looked down at a mushroom and saw a dark bird winging west. Oh, the world of illusions we live in. Casting the magic shadow spell was a straggler daisy plant, Calyptocarpus vialis.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Rocks like wood

Go ahead, tell me that the rocks in the upper center don’t look like wood. Tell me, and I won’t believe you.

We noticed these wood-like rocks by the side of the Trans-Canada Highway in Yoho National Park, British Columbia, after I pulled over on September 7th to photograph the overlapping mountains in smoke that you saw in the previous post.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

Illusions

Two days ago, a post at Pairodox included a photograph in which part of a rock appears to be the head of a bear. Today being April 1, a day on which people celebrate illusions, it seems appropriate—and not at all paradoxical—to follow up with a picture from Great Hills Park on July 17th of last year. I won’t influence you by telling you what animal I saw here; you’re free to use your own imagination.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

Ancient Egypt visits the Big Bend

Last week Steve Gingold commented that some rock formations in Study Butte reminded him of a Sphinx. That in turn reminded me that after I’d started the long trek home to Austin on November 23rd I stopped one last time in Big Bend National Park to do a little wandering and picture-taking. Among the things I photographed were the ocotillo you saw last time and this sandstone formation that looked to me like a Sphinx, although in this view it seemed to be having a bad hair day. The structure also looks to me now like the front end of a streamlined locomotive from the mid-20th century.

With those fanciful visions we bid adieu to the scenic Trans-Pecos desert of west Texas. Tomorrow I’ll begin to catch you up on some of the things that have been going on in nature close to home for the past month.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

A would-be desert denizen

This mound in the western part of Big Bend National Park attracted me when I drove by on November 22nd because it looked like a camel that had knelt on the desert sand. All that was missing was a snout.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman