defamiliarization

One of the things I enjoy doing here on STILL is presenting familiar subjects in an unfamiliar way in order to help you resee the beauty of nature. Just a little reminder of the magnificence of this place we all call home. When I do workshops on The Art of Noticing, I sometimes refer to this as learning to see below the ordinary to the infra-ordinary: Learning to resee the things we have become so habituated to, that we actually stop noticing them at all. Recently, I heard an author being interviewed and he used the term defamiliarization, and I thought “That’s it! That’s exactly what I try to do!”, defamiliarize the subject so you can see it anew, as if for the first time. Case in point, this photo of foxtail barley seedheads.

wild foxtail barley seedheads (Hordeum jubatum)