The Droste effect — known as mise en abyme in heraldry — is the effect of a picture appearing within itself, in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear.

The appearance is recursive: the smaller version contains an even smaller version of the picture, and so on. Only in theory could this go on forever; practically, it continues only as long as the resolution of the picture allows, which is relatively short, since each iteration geometrically reduces the picture's size.

It is a visual example of a strange loop, a self-referential system of instancing which is the cornerstone of fractal geometry. (Wikipedia)

The Dutch artist, Escher, used these mathematics as the basis for many of his mind bending artworks. Droste was actually a brand of dutch hot chocolate that had an image within an image within an image on its package. The movie "Inception" involves a dream within a dream within a dream ... Do you have recurring (recursive) dreams of hot chocolate?? Am I a dreamer?

My interest in mathematics, fractal imaging and photography has led to my first series of "Droste" imagery. Software of choice is Photospiralysis.

Many more to come ... enjoy! Feedback welcomed. Keith