Pareidolia is not a word commonly heard during the Ilkley Arts Festival, but visiting professional photographer Lizzie Shepherd dropped it into her presentation at the Club’s Festival event on 8 December.
She also urged listeners to test their Mess Threshold – exploring how complex they could make their landscape photographs whilst still retaining coherence. Her results provided some interesting quasi-abstract images which showed that apparently unremarkable scenes could in fact become visual treats. She urged photographers to be playful in their approach and relish recalling the circumstances and emotions they experienced when a scene was captured.
And as for ‘pareidolia’, it is perceiving familiar patterns where none exist – like seeing faces in rocks. Of course those present all knew that.
You can see examples of Lizzie’s work here.