Altered Perceptions

I’ve been working on some shallow gas wells in Noble County, Oklahoma lately. The area is wide open, with few farm houses and trees, and an absolutely huge sky that lends itself to numerous pictures. The sky is beautiful but even more interesting when you add some effects with your favorite photo editing software.

Being the software junkie that I am, I have a half-dozen or so photo editing programs. Tonight I was fiddling with an Oklahoma sky picture using Roxio Photo Suite because I like its filter set. What I created is a psychedelic version of an oil well tank battery back dropped by an anomalously red sky. The result is, well, psychedelic.

As I gazed at the picture I could almost imagine that the created picture was real and not contrived. The lens of a camera, after all, is similar to the human eye, the digital image it creates like a well-formed thought. It made me wonder if what I see is always the same as what the person beside me sees.

Just like the picture of the sky that I just modified with Photo Suite, my mind is capable of modifying everything I taste, see and hear. How do we know when it is telling the truth, and does it really matter anyway?