Afterimage

Afterimage, a definition:

At its core, an afterimage is a visual perception that continues after the original stimulus has ceased. It’s like a visual echo, a lingering trace of what we’ve just seen.

–NeuroLaunch site, September 15, 2024, retrieved April 3, 2025
Afterimage Psychology: Visual Persistence in Perception Explained

By definition, an afterimage is a visual-based experience, related to how the brain processes sight. By connotation, an afterimage might be many things. A photograph, for instance, is an image that persists after the actual place-time it represents has become part of the past.

I used to travel

for business in small groups with others and I was always so surprised to see how different the photos we brought back were. One experienced photographer, in particular, would return with stunning landscape photos, all these carefully composed landscapes—curves and architecture of the land caught just so in the ambient light.

On the other hand, I would come back with bits and pieces of objects—a close up of a cactus, where the central spines swirled. A blossom on an anonymous tree. Weird light shifting off of rock formations that seemed to exist, somehow, in isolation. It was as if we weren’t even on the same trip.

It was a good lesson

on how the artist’s inner eye varies, especially for the visual arts. I can’t tell you the number of times I got home and looked at pictures and thought, why did I take that, and how many photos of bees do I need, and can I edit the bee’s wings so they are less blurry, and why does that bee seem to be sitting on a horse statue, I don’t recall any horse statues, who the dickens took these pictures?

Of course, that means when you want a group photo, don’t ask me to take it, unless you give me enough time for me to notice how the flag on the porch behind the group looks like it is sprouting out of someone’s head.

No matter how a picture is framed, it says something about the photographer’s focus and intentions. The scene captured is input, material used to create the final image. Maybe the photographer needs do nothing but take the image. Maybe they need to crop it, modify it, recolor it, change it in some way to make their art appear.

In this digital age, it seems as though photography ought to be easier than ever–you see results right away and can try again if you didn’t get what you wanted on the first shot. And you can edit afterward.

But that assumes you are aware

of everything in your photo, taking into account everything in your view, when making the photo. If, like me, you tend to hyper-focus on one or another aspect of the view, you may find surprises–good or bad–upon later review.

Some surprises can’t be fixed in editing. Some might be things you’d rather not change. And sometimes, too much editing feels dishonest or feels like a lack of witness.

If you weren’t aware, April is National Poetry Month. Here’s a poem for today:

Afterimage

Wilting daisies stare their bruised eyes up, argue
with morning’s glare. My eyes, corrected, squint.

The singing shadow of a front yard maple breaks
over a dirt-covered doll near a rusted chain

ringing the tree. Chain presumably meant to hitch a dog.
Only after making the photo do I see what I might have,

should have, framed out. Get it good in the camera,
they say. One tries. Polarized lenses cheat, my eyes

are slow to find the excess: branches, snippets, edges.
Broken bricks creeping in or out. Too focused on the small:

a broken door knocker, an asphalt crack exhaling in
the foreground. Further back, a chain fence hedges

bloom-ready rosebuds. They scream, forever,
for the daises to scram. A scratch of blue chalk

across tilted sidewalk waits for rain that won’t come.
Who am I to decide, or re-decide, so late in the game?

Even digital erasure feels wrong. The chain was for
the dog right? Not a child, not the doll?