Amazing Demonstration of How Our Minds can be Tricked with Perspective

Photography Tips

With robust post-processing software being both affordable and easy to obtain, it’s often hard to decipher whether many images are real or fake. Things like clouds, moons, people, and buildings can easily be pasted into a foreign photo and passed off as original. However, there are other ways to deceive the eye without the use of editing software. An anamorphosis is an image which is distorted and must be viewed in a certain way in order to view it’s intended form. Check out this clever video that demonstrates this bizarre concept:

These images are not easy to make, however, as they must match the angle, texture, and lighting of their surroundings in order to be convincing. Many sidewalk chalk artists have experimented with anamorphic drawings, creating large murals on wide open sidewalks where only a very specific vantage point will give you the true image.

Anamorphic images are not limited to one surface or to 2-D either. Many anamorphic images are drawn on 3-D surfaces or comprised of 3-D objects, but still require a particular perspective to view. So if you weren’t confused enough before about whether photos are real or not, now you have to watch out for real life objects too.

This is not a real globe, but a anamorphic image of one

Here’s the image turned upside-down

Some anamorphosis is also created using a mirror or cylindrical mirror where the image is drawn on a flat plane and undistorted by the mirror.