Tilt-Shift photos are the ones that look like they are of a miniature scene, but are really a trick of the focus and depth-of-field. You can do it with a special lens, or with software. Which is now available online: Tilt Shift Maker
Here’s a picture of rock-stacking from my trip to Monterey, tilt-shifted:
Whoa.
When it tells you to look away at the end, look at something with contrast and texture, like with lettering. Not the wall. You can keep looking at the video — the effect you see is in your mind, not in the video.
Optical illusions: caused by eye or brain?
For the past 200 years, researchers have debated whether the illusion of motion in a static image is caused by mechanisms in the eye, in the brain, or by a combination of both. Because measuring these kinds of physiological responses is difficult, no study has successfully measured direct and tightly timed correlations between a kinetic illusion and a physiological precursor.
A different lean, mean fightin’ machine. Stroboscopic effect image.
An audio “illusion.” The pitch increases, and seems to continue when you replay the clip.
This phenomenon is known as Shepard’s paradox; the ending tones are the same as the beginning ones, so it’s the auditory equivalent of Escher’s “Ascending and Descending” perpetual staircase.
Cool photo that’s not quite what it appears
Oh, way cool. A rotating grid looks like a bunch of smaller grids when you rotate it.
Several cool ones, along with some standard ones.
How many cameras are you wearing? (Chandler, to Monica)
candid camera, over at Cocktail Party Physics.
Richmond’s main hypothesis, however, was that the effect stems from the fact that the camera only has one “eye” (i.e., the lens), whereas human beings have two eyes, roughly 7 to 8 centimeters apart. The camera, it seems, lacks depth perception. The result is a kind of “flattening” effect that can make objects seem wider in photographs.