Optical illusion
At some time or other you have probably taken a ‘peculiar’ photograph, with someone standing right in front of a tree trunk. It seems as if the tree is growing right out of their head. How does that work exactly? And can you deliberately take these kinds of peculiar photographs yourself?
A camera or smartphone
Get started
What did you discover?
Images like this create an illusion. This is why they are called optical illusions – they are not what they seem to be. They always include a combination of different objects or different people, and a difference in distance is almost always involved. You only notice the difference if you look very closely indeed.