When looking out at the world through our eyes, it's easy to take for granted that our perceptions are an absolute rendering of How Things Are. But in fact, it's not quite as simple as that.
Most of our actual vision is done in the brain — the eye (while amazing for a biological construct) is really a rather mediocre optical device, but all of its quirks are processed out into a smooth, high-resolution, three-dimensional model of the world. An infinite number of wavelengths of light are resolved into the perception of specific colors. Lines and edges are processed specially. Faces and other special patterns jump out at us even when they're just suggested by an alignment of shapes.
How, in a nutshell, does all of this work? And more importantly, what knowledge of this system is useful in composing photographs? What can we take advantage of, and what quirks present problems to be worked around?
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