SEA HORSE BY THE STREAM

The tangled form of this exposed tree root promised a good picture, but for weeks the light never seemed quite right until one morning in late December when the sun began to strike directly down the stream. Inverted, with only a few seconds to expose, the light converged on the two trees in the center and illuminated the small, elliptical area just below. Holding my breath as the light moved into these crosshairs of beauty, the shutter opened, and a jolt of excitement went through my body like an electric current. A pattern of light and shadow but all the rest was to be discovered later in the darkroom. My wife pointed out the human face seeming to emerge from the center of the vertically held photo. On the other hand, she (and others) had difficulty discerning the open-mouthed Saber-tooth Tiger (or other big cat) on top of the Masked Musketeer or, upside down, (actually right side up) the dragon regarding a Jurassic bird. That is rare, however, since her eyes are usually more creature-tropic than mine, which always had difficulty turning the old woman into a young one (or vice versa) in that well-known, reversible Gestalt picture.