... Journal Entry
"...Our brains seem able to integrate jumbled stimuli into a cohesive, comprehensible whole within a timeframe of up to 2.5 seconds. This window is the "subjective present", and exists to allow us to perceive consciously sequences of events." - The Brain a Users Guide - New Scientist - Alison George.
In practice these windows of subjective present are often much shorter than this and can typically last one to 1.5 seconds. This may be why we humans bang on about being in the now, in the moment, in the present, and why so many of us photographers talk about capturing the decisive moment maybe?
It also might go someway to explain why we have so called "rules" of composition and why we attempt to bring order out of chaos when framing our photographs, creating an illusion of harmony out of the disparate components within the image, a jumbled set of visual stimuli if you like.
Thus we have this burning desire to compose, grab and preserve pictorially these fleeting "windows of subjective present", these snapshots of moments in time, before they are gone forever. In someway maybe this helps us to relive them later in this fantastical world of the illusion of time we create for ourselves.
Weird or what?