Moscow-based photographer Alexander Khokhlov and makeup artist Veronica Ershova are known for some brilliant optical illusions. They have recently published their latest project titled Humiforms, which turns models into familiar objects using only makeup and simple props. Thanks to Veronica’s marvelous makeup and Alexander’s photography skills, the illusions were made entirely in-camera, and the final black and white images are truly striking.
What causes this weird line in this super blue blood moon photo?
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The photos of Super Blue Blood Moon have been all over the internet in the past couple of days. Destin Sandlin from Smarter Every Day took some shots too, and he captured a phenomenon that got him utterly confused.
Destin and his friend Trevor Mahlmann shot the moon aligned with Saturn 5 rocket in Alabama, USA. As the tip of the rocket and the moon got aligned, a dark line appeared, and it stayed in line with the rocket’s tip all along. Destin has a great knowledge of both astronomy and photography, but this phenomenon got him so confused that he turned to the community for help. Can you tell what this line is?
A single photo creates optical illusion that will mess with your mind
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Optical illusions are awesome. Sometimes it takes a proper angle, light, or some help from Photoshop to make them and create a fascinating effect. But other times, a single photo is enough to play with your mind.
The Seoul Toll Gate is a real life inception-like cityscape
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If you’ve seen Inception, you’ll probably recognize the movie’s signature “bending” cityscapes. Of course, those cityscapes required quite a bit of computational power to render. But what if there was a place on earth that actually bends like the streets in the movie?
Welcome to Seoul Toll Gate, a place where your dreams prevail and physics perish. Or does it?
How forced perspective works and the maths behind it
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Forced perspective is one of the most wonderfully creative tools photography affords. It allows us to create optical illusions that either baffle or simply amuse us. Or we can change the scale of items seamlessly with ease. We’ve seen it in popular movies and TV shows like Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. We probably see it far more often than we realise.
But there’s often a lot of maths and science that goes into creating forced perspective, as you can see in the LoTR clip linked above. But it doesn’t always need to be as complex as one might think. This video from John Hess explains the mathematic and photographic principles that go into forced perspective and breaks it down into simple terms.
Vision AI is just as stupid as real people. This isn’t a crowd of people at a concert
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It’s always funny the things we see in images that aren’t really there. Like probably most of you who saw this come up as a preview on social media, I thought this was a crowd at a concert on first glance. But no, it’s not, it’s a field of cotton about to be mowed down by machines at night.
Don’t feel too bad, though. It turns out that Google’s Vision AI also thought it was a rock concert, too.
This town in Iceland has a floating zebra crossing to slow down drivers
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Of course, it’s not really floating, it’s an optical illusion. Painted on a road in the fishing town of Ísafjörður in Iceland, the crossing appears to float in the air. At least, that’s how it appears to drivers coming up the road. It’s sure to make those who haven’t seen it before think twice before speeding through it, especially if people are waiting to cross. Well, many of them, at least.
This guy’s clever camera tricks will play with your mind
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Before Twitter killed Vine, Kevin Parry was famous for his mind-bending short clips. The US-based stop-motion animator creates videos with clever and fun optical illusions. Even though we all know they are just clever filmmaking and editing tricks, for some of them we can’t help but wonder – how did he do it?
What happens when camera’s frame rate matches bird’s flapping wings
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When the camera’s frame rate matches the fast moving objects (such as helicopter rotors), a weird effect can occur and make the subject look like it’s levitating. Al Brooks noticed this when he was reviewing the security footage from his surveillance camera. And this time, it’s not a floating helicopter – it’s a floating bird. And while it’s amusing to see, it’s also a great illustration of the “wagon-wheel effect.”
Photographer shoots architecture photos so they look like optical illusions
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Dallas-based photographer Nikola Olić travels the world and captures the buildings in a way that will make you stop, look and scratch your head. His architectural shots look like optical illusions, yet they were all created without digital manipulation. He chooses unique angles for his shots, combining them with carefully composed shadows and reflections. As a result, his photos will make the objects you’ve seen a hundred times look completely new and unique.
