Seeing Rather Than Looking

Several of my facebook friends have been circulating the photo you see to the left.  There is a face within the photo that you may have a hard time finding (answer below).  I want to take a look at a few things that may help you see more stuff in the outdoors on your next trip (or possibly on your next facebook outing). 


To begin with, there is very little doubt to me that the face was photoshopped into the photograph. The shadowing on the face does not resemble the shadowing around it and the face is incredibly two dimensional.  At the same time, this IS a 2D photograph which allows alot of things to be lost in translation from in-person viewing to seeing the photograph.  

The super-cool author at a recent tracking class

In a general sense what most of us do is that we look at things, particularly in a woods setting like the photo above.  In that particular picture, for those of us who are not used to the outdoors,  the big pile of rocks might be the only thing that looks different.  "It all looks the same", we might say.   What we want you to do, is to not just look around you but to see around you.  There are plenty of things to consider but all that I want you to consider in these photos today is what trackers and other like-minded individuals call disturbance.  


If you take a look at the picture above with me holding a flashlight on the ground, you will see that there is a very intentionally placed shoe print (track) on a somewhat muddy surface.  What I want you to notice is the area directly outside of the track itself.  That area is light brown in color and almost shiny.  Whereas the track itself is rather dark brown and not shiny.  Imagine for a moment what that particular area looked like before the track was made.  Then by considering what it looks like with the track in it, you will note that it is disturbed.    If you don't see how leaves typically look when they are on the forest floor then you might not recognize that when they are stepped upon, turned over, or twisted slightly that they will indicate a disturbance.

Dude in camo

Take a look at the picture labeled as Dude in camo and ask yourself, "Why do I see his left arm and the binoculars so easily?"  I love this photo because there are some things that are hard to see (his right shoulder) and others that are easy to see.  You will notice the binoculars have very defined edges and are shiny whereas the things around them are not.  The woodland pattern camo he is wearing on his left arm simply has broader patterns than both the vegetation in front of his chest as well as the straight line trees behind his left shoulder.  These are just a few of the reasons you see the arm and binoculars.  Some of you may have also seen the outline of both his nose and mouth under the camouflage veil he is wearing.  This is because the lines of his nose and mouth, do not follow the diagonal lines of the veil, which in turn do not match the straight lines of the trees.......I could go on and on, but do you see these things? These things are not necessarily disturbance per se, however they are very different from the other lines around them and that is why you can see them rather clearly.  


The next two photos were taken when I attended a Scout class in North Carolina under the instruction of Mr. Richard Cleveland of Earth School and Mr. Tom Laskowski of the Mid-West Native Skills Institute.  I am no photographer so there is much left to be desired there.  However I do think these two photos next to one another highlight what sort of things you can do when you purpose to hide something from sight in the woods.

What you are looking at is an opening to a very big hole that my my teammates and I dug.  This hole was actually big enough for me to get myself and some of my gear down into it.  We placed the vegetation that surrounds the black blob in the middle picture.   There is both moss and trees and plants that were put there to in essence draw your eye away from the opening of the hole.  This could easily fool the eye of those of us who did not know how to see it at the beginning of the week.  By the end of the week of training however this sort of stuff stood out to most of us just as a pink elephant had been standing in the same place.  This is because we had spent about 15-20 hours a day for the entire week looking for such disturbance.  


So, to summarize.....look for disturbance, lines that don't seem to match up with others, very defined edges (the woods rarely have those), colors and value change, these and many, many more, are the things that will help you to see more on your next outing.  


If you want some help them with this, then please come to one of our scout classes in 2012, or....better yet invite me over for lunch and take me out in your neck of the woods to walk around.  I'll do alot of things for a good lunch with good company. :) I consider myself very much the beginner, but hopefully I can help you get started on seeing things rather than just looking at things.