True Metaphors - # - arctangent's Photos

Images that illustrate, or are metaphors for, ideas, emotions, idioms and sayings, human conditions, etc.

I am placing images that are visual plays on words in a separate gallery in my "Metaphortography" category. If interested, please visit it at:

http://arctangent.smugmug.com/gallery/9085519_f2zvV#605173602_sjWmJ

gallery pages: 1 2 >

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I react to this image as though it's a metaphor for the world of realities that lies just below the surface of all the superficialities we encounter in life. The superficial world might be beautiful, but it's ephemeral, always shifting and changing, as are the shimmering reflections that veil our view of the firm ground beneath the surface of the water.

Layers of Light.
Reflections in Fleming Creek of the overhanging trees.
Parker Mill County Park,
Washtenaw County, Michigan
October 4, 2011

$Image 117 v01 Tailrace Abstract #07 (October 7, 2011) - Filtered version (Poster Edges 4 3 6) A face? Like Picasso? This could serve as a metaphor for confusion, when the supposedly orderly world around you looks fractured and chaotic. Tailrace of Geddes Dam at Dixboro Road Huron River, Ann Arbor Michigan October 7, 2011$

Metaphor: Life can be an uphill journey. (A rather disorienting reflection of a passing car.)

Fall foliage in Forest Hill Cemetery, Ann Arbor, Michigan. October 8, 2011.
Jinkerson monument.

The quotation on this face is attributed to the character Bilbo Baggins, in 'The Hobbit'. "Never laugh at live dragons."

Metaphor: Stubbornness, or refusing to bow to the inevitable.

One lone leaf clings to a branch in an otherwise bare tree.

October 2010.

Metaphor: Sweet revenge. A mulberry tree has grown up inside the empty shell of the old hydroelectric plant for the Peninsular Paper company.

The metaphor would be more complete if this were a species of tree that is actually used to produce the wood pulp used in paper manufacturing. Alas, it is just a mulberry, whose fruit is sweet, but whose wood is pretty useless.

Derelict hydroelectric plant of the defunct Peninsular Paper Company.
Huron River, Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Metaphor: Everyone talking at once.

Interfering ripple patterns caused by water striders jumping around on the near mirror-like surface of a pond.

Metaphor: Instinct for survival.

Sprout on a seemingly dead limb of an ash tree.

I react to this image as though it's a metaphor for the world of realities that lies just below the surface of all the superficialities we encounter in life. The superficial world might be beautiful, but it's ephemeral, always shifting and changing, as are the shimmering reflections that veil our view of the firm ground beneath the surface of the water.

Layers of Light.
Reflections in Fleming Creek of the overhanging trees.
Parker Mill County Park,
Washtenaw County, Michigan
October 4, 2011