Do you see what I see?

I've had a day off today - well almost.
A visit to the hairdresser, which I always love, followed by lunch with Mum, and then child-minding her neighbour's children - collecting them from school, feeding them etc.

I am fascinated by vision, and visual perception. Maybe because I missed out on a lot of visual experience until the age of 7, when I started wearing glasses and the world came alive for me.... But that is a whole different story.

At school, in year 8 I got thrown out of a science lesson, when we were learning about colour, for asking the following question:

"How do we know that we see the same colours?"

"What do you mean?" asked Mr Oakes.

"Well, we've all learnt grass is green and sky is blue, because those are the words that have been assigned to those things, but how do I know that what you see as green, is the same as what I see?"

"Get out, Get out of my class"

"What? Why?"

"Just get out."

"Oh! OK, I thought it was quite a good question....."

"Get. OUT"

Maybe Mr Oakes should watch this You Tube clip: Do you see what I see? , because his extraordinary reaction further fired my interest and I went on to study the effects of language on visual perception as part of my degree!!

Thank you Mr Oakes.


It was a bright sunny day and very windy, I popped home to walk the dog, and was delighted to catch this shot... Do you see what I see?

The camouflage of the Comma butterfly has always fascinated me, the upper wings are coloured bright rust and black, whereas the underside looks remarkably like a dead leaf. See the white comma mark that is responsible for the name? So clever.