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» Forum Index » Straight photography and off-topic » Topic: The Up or Down Conundrum!!!

Posted on 03/09/18 1:08:24 PM
michael sinclair
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The Up or Down Conundrum!!!
Here's a conundrum that will tax even Steve: are the stone steps going upwards...or...are they going downwards?

NB the photo (off the internet) has not been touched.




Posted on 03/09/18 1:14:28 PM
DavidMac
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Re: The Up or Down Conundrum!!!
A well known classic illusion that exists in many versions. This is a very fine example! Thanks Michael - it will be added to my illusion library.

Of couse if you really want to have fun you can add two people passing in opposite directions - one standing 'upright' and the other looking down on the top of their head.

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Posted on 03/09/18 5:30:47 PM
Steve Caplin
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Re: The Up or Down Conundrum!!!
Interesting! I'd say it's going up, due to the trees overhanging at the top, and the extra light there. But it is an interesting view.

David - right up your street, I'd have thought.

Posted on 03/09/18 5:52:13 PM
DavidMac
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Re: The Up or Down Conundrum!!!
Steve Caplin wrote:
David - right up your street, I'd have thought.


Here's one I made earlier.





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The subtlety and conviction of any Photoshop effect is invariably inversely proportional to the number of knobs on it .......

Posted on 03/09/18 6:36:39 PM
lwc
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Re: The Up or Down Conundrum!!!
Confusing, but based on the lighting as I see it, the steps are going upward.

I like this illusion because it appears to rotate...



Posted on 03/09/18 7:33:51 PM
michael sinclair
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Re: The Up or Down Conundrum!!!
Steve, I still can't tell

David nice work!

Yes It does rotate/spin Loyd, and it is just a jpg too!


Posted on 03/09/18 9:13:37 PM
DavidMac
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Posts: 4900

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Re: The Up or Down Conundrum!!!
Michael I agree with Steve. I think they are going up. But for quite different reasons. I think the steps, as we see them, are too narrow to be treads and are therefore risers ........

........ but that's incredibly tenuous reasoning .........

Thanks Michael for your compliment. I like the lady passing herself on the steps because it is so simple - yet effective.

Loyd these moving spinning illusions, which are often based based on colour overload or the 'vibrations' of complimentary colours, never work for me. Same goes, most of time, for stereograms where a 3D image can emerge from a seemingly random repeat pattern of pixels. Strangely I have never been able to 'see' either of them.

I have no idea if this may affect my ability to appreciate illusions of this type but, since infancy, I have had very limited function in one eye. My vision is not truly stereoscopic. I have no proper depth perception. I have learned to judge depth, quite unconsciously, by relative size, parallax, haze, and other fairly subliminal depth cues. There is, on the face of it, no depth cueing required for these 'moving' illusions or for stereograms but, for whatever reason, I can't see this type of illusion. It quite simply doesn't work for me.

On the other hand it may just be that my lack of true stereoscopic vision may be why perspective cheats and illusions of the more 'Escherian' nature come to me quite naturally. They rely for the most part on cheating the 2D projection of 3D onto a flat plane. But, for me, 2D is less a 'projection' of 3D than, quite simply, the way I actually see.

The mysteries of vision .........

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The subtlety and conviction of any Photoshop effect is invariably inversely proportional to the number of knobs on it .......

Posted on 03/09/18 10:12:59 PM
lwc
Hole in One
Posts: 2615

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Re: The Up or Down Conundrum!!!
David, if you could see this one spin/rotate/move, you would note that it is ever so slight... almost as if you were simply imagining that movement.

As far as stereograms go... I've looked a bunch of them over the years and have never seem anything. Even when what I am supposed to see is pointed out to me it just doesn't work.

I don't even bother to look at them anymore.

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