Faces of Nature
In a break with tradition for this website, I have not limited this gallery to photographs taken only in Temiskaming District, though most are from here. These are all naturally occurring faces, created purely by natural forces. None have been carved or manipulated in any way by humans. In order for that sentence to be true, I have omitted from this gallery all of the faces I have found on man-made rock cuts along highways. In some cases, I have made contrast enhancements to the photo to make the face stand out a little more so that it is easier for you to find the same face that I saw. If I have done so, it will be indicated in the photo captions, but the photos are otherwise unaltered.
Despite the popularity of the phrase "Mother Nature", I can't help noticing that the majority of these faces are decidedly more masculine than feminine. It seems that rocks and trees, in particular, suffer both an age and gender bias. Grumpy old men predominate. Clouds, too, seem biased towards older men, though not quite as strongly. Snowscapes, even with their generally smoother lines and less overall detail, are only a little less partial.
My plan is to continuously add images to this gallery as new faces are found and photographed, so check back every now and then for new material. Note that the gallery has multiple pages, which you can scroll through using the chevrons at the top and bottom of each page. Be sure to read the individual photo captions for location details and further miscellaneous musings. I welcome your feedback, so please feel free to leave comments.
Be wary! Everywhere you go, they're out there..... watching you!
Though not a whole face, this drifted form found on the side of Highway 65W in Dymond Township, just outside New Liskeard, gave me the distinct impression of the heavily-browed eyes and bulbous nose of a cold, menacing stare, well suited to the mid-February day on which I found it.
This face, lying on its back with the forehead to the left and the small, slightly open mouth near the center of the photo, is another that did not become apparent to me until I was reviewing the photos back on the computer. It was taken about an hour after the previous shot along the same stretch of highway.
I generally have a lot of difficulty seeing good faces in clouds. In cumulous clouds, the kind that is often best for picking out animal shapes, there's usually too much puffiness, or what I'll call "soft bubbliness", to the cloud edges to make for good edges of faces, so the "face" is more a matter of imagination than from the actual presence of visble features. Every now and then, though, a really good face will appear in the sky, and that can be a magical moment. This haunting face was almost spooky for me when I first saw it, sending a momentary chill down my spine.
More so than for any other type of "facial substrate", cloud faces must be captured by the camera immediately after perceiving them, because they can be very short-lived visages. I was driving when I saw this face, and I pulled over to the side of Highway 65 in Kerns Township to photograph it as soon as I saw it. Having captured a couple of images, I carried on, keeping my eye on the face as I drove. By the time I was few kilometers further down the road, the combination of ongoing drift of the water vapours themselves and the change in my perspective made the face so badly distorted that it was no longer as striking, the eye having sheared far to the right compared to the rest of the face. A couple kilometers beyond that and it was gone altogether, despite the impressively large size of this face.
This, by the way, is also one of the few human faces that I've found that lends itself to being perceived as female, ar at the very least, as gender neutral. (I don't bother attempting to discern the gender for animal faces.)
Here are a few of the better cumulus cloud faces I've discovered. This cloud has been rotated 90 degrees clockwise to reveal the profile of this elderly countenance. I can't decide if it is male or female, but I'm inclined more towards female because of the big high-rise hairdo. This is a contrast-enhanced version of the original.
Another photo with a 90 degree rotation, this time counter-clockwise, gives us this puffy-cheeked face.
This bearded old man jutted out from the outcropping at Hooper's Rock.
Here's another section of the escarpment at Hooper's Rock. What do you make of it? Can you see a face? Let's go through what I can see over the next few images.
This is the largest, and for me, the most obvious face on this section of bedrock outcropping. Some have told me that they have a hard time seeing it though, even when highlighted like this. This may be a case where it would be helpful for you to squint at it.
Here's another section of the Lake Temiskaming shoreline, again on the Quebec side of the lake. It doesn't look remarkable at first glance, but it is brimming with faces....
Here's the largest, a left-facing profile with open mouth, a high bridge on the nose and a shallow forehead. It occupies almost the entire height of the cliff.
The other faces are all a fair bit smaller, so here's a zoomed in section of the cliff. This framing will be held constant for the next group of images so that you can see how the faces relate to one another over the expanse of rock in this image. Brightness and contrast adjustments will be used to reveal the locations of the individual faces.
The profiled eye of the large face has become the open mouth of this smaller face in a nearly head-on view.
This slightly left-facing face seems to have a somewhat dour expression. The small green patch might even be imagined as a small, Hitler-like mustache, and he's wearing a matching green toupee.
Another wry individual with a largish nose. This one kind of reminds me of comedic actor W.C. Fields.
A left-facing profile with half-closed eyelid, flattened chin, a bit of a pompadour haircut and a thin, closed mouth.
Head-on view of an old man with rounded, open mouth.
Left-facing profile of a blunt-nosed neanderthal face.
