By Vurdlak on June 29, 2010, with 134 Comments
Got this gag from some sort of newsletter. There isn’t much to explain, just when you see the first photo you get the impression boy and a girl are sitting next to each other. In reality, the blond sits one bench behind her classmate, and while her friend stretches his neck to look into formulas, it appears as if he’s trying to cheat during the exam. What do you think? Is it a good optical illusion, or did someone pull a trick on us? Let’s discuss!
(81 votes)
Only photographer know the truth. This is optical trick! Uses tele-lens to compress the space between them, and with leveling the table so it didn’t show the space between desks. Of course f-stop on the first shot was much narrow than the second, which was gave more bokeh to the background.
Who gives a crap? She’s HOT!
True That dude!
It is totally possible for the female to be one row behind the male. I am an amateur photography, and this effect is easily done using a telephoto lense. When you zoom in, it compresses the background and forground, often causing objects in the background to appear beside those in the foreground. The reason both are in focus and not the far background has to do with the aperature setting (f-stop). Depending on the setting you can make objects at a chosen distance in front of and behind the focal point in focus, and everything else beyond that distance becomes blurry.
Due to the height this photo was taken, you can not see them at separate tables because the table she is at is hidden from the direct line of sight of the camera.
For those in doubt, do a bit on google searching for telephoto lense effects, some basic photography about aperature settings, and you will see how this is possible. There are numerous effects in photography using a variety of lenses, f-stops, shutter speeds, etc.
Can’t believe noone’s said I’d hit that yet. My god, the things I’d love to put inside her, illusion or no illusion. Mmmmmm Kirsten Dunst.
*helping bring the internet down to the lowest common denominator*
Haha this is great!
Pickle, no.
N Illusion here. They are clearly setting beside each other. :-(
No Illusion here. They are clearly setting beside each other. :-(
yeah whatever, she is pretty.
The girl is physically far more massive than the boy making her appear more foreground rather than background.
The illusion works because it exploits the two-dimensional photo limitations, no depth of field.
I agree with what toffee!!!!!!!!!!!!1
There are two photographs, and the photographer only had three models. He rearranged them for the second photo. So what? Where’s the illusion?
The girl really is one row behind. To achieve this effect (to prevent the girl from blurring thus having the illusion that they are sitting on the same row), the picture was not taken directly in front of the two, but slightly angled to the left side, probably at a 45-degree angle. Look at the chairs.
wow, one of the most pointless discusions I’ve ever seen. Now I’m part of it *sigh*
Thanks to Tatarize for clarifying.
Masa
The reveal should show more detail, as to why can cannot count enough benches or chairs for the 2nd to be true,
why does the 2nd photo have to blur out the background ? He should have shown the room in full, so we can check the plausibility of combination of angle and telescope lense working to make the illusion.
as it is, we are left saying “well you show them at one table, and then say they are different tables.. we cannot see empty chairs, we cannot see edges of tables .. is the bench curved ..or its a photoshop.
Yeah. Very lame illusion if you ask me.
I love how everyone tries to explain the fact that it’s not real. And they’re right – this is totally fake, and they are sitting next to each other. She moved seats, obviously. Well done for trying, though.
Under the assumption that that both have the same type of pencil, her’s is thicker as her hands a re slightly closer to the camera. This is obviously no trick at all, they are sitting next to each other.. yea get a life.
NEXT!
two words: forced perspective
look it up =)
Obviously the illusion is that the blonde is actually a guy.
I still can not believe ..lol
It’s an old camera trick. They’re both in focus which makes it difficult to decipher that they are not sitting side-by-side.
I don’t buy it. I see three tables, they both have thier elbows reasted on the second one back. I call BULLSHIT.
This is clearly real. It’s not like he could just get up and move in front of her. Don’t be ridiculous.
The same way she candidly turned and smiled at the camera. It was just a coincidence.
Remind me of that Death Note parody “No L I am the one standing behind you!”
hahahaha.. blackboard is behind them and then infront of them………….realy bulshit
come on the two blackboard are or different shades of green! there are TWO blackboards,
you never seen a classroom with two boards? huh?
never :P
I think she’s cute! What’s here number?
Oh please! Look at her. In the 2nd pic she is DIRECTLY behind it. You can clearly see the table behind the guy in the first pic, and you can clearly see that she is not on it.
Lies! Although this is supposed to look like that camera trick (changing the depth of field) it ISN’T. Like the other commenters say, look at the tables. Both their arms are sitting level on the same table. And you can see the table behind them (it looks just a bit higher in the photo).
Idiots for not noticing or thinking. If you look carefully…actually you don’t even have to look carefully to see that the pictures are clearly taken at two different times. The teacher is sitting down in the first picture and then he’s up in the second picture marking on the board. Therefore she most likely moved to another spot. Simple solution.
@adil There are 2 boards, silly :P
@Andy Those are actually 2 different people :|
And to all of those saying their arms are on the same table, those are actually TWO tables, directly aligned over one other. It’s a perspective trick
If you say that one has to be blurrier than the other, that’s not true. It’s all in the camera angle, man! In this shot, the picture is taken, diagonally.
The person in the back is another student, and it’s not the same person as the teacher in front.
The classroom has TWO boards. I’ve seen one like this before.
if you look clearly there three rows of tables in ascending order.The first desk is the at the bottom, the second tables are on the middle level and the last row where the blurred guy is seated is at a higher level.the two are seated on the same level so which means they on the same table.thats my story n i’m sticking to it
if this were a camera trick, the plane at which the camera focuses would have to extend diagonally from front to back at a certain angle. seeing that both foreground and background of the first picture are both blurry with nothing in the foreground or background being clear, this must be a trick and not an illusion. i’ve worked with 8×10 cameras and they have the option of tilting the lens as to create an interesting plane of focus as you can see here:
camera’s focus on a single plane, but once the lens is tilted/shifted, that plan changes. clearly not a camera trick.
I’d have to call BS on this one too. Don’t know how it was done, but I don’t believe it. I think that it’s a bit strange that they are both the same size in the pic. If one was behind the other wouldn’t one be smaller?
She’s a big girl. If she was smaller than him or the same size, she’d look farther away. But she’s a large girl so the illusion holds.
or hes a small man :)
My friend made this for 4 chan as a joke.
Those were two stock photos from a site. It’s not an illusion, as far as we can tell.
He says thanks for all the publicity, lol.
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-2062528-student-portrait.php
Wtf… I know that girl, she’s the gf of my cousin
then when ur cousin is with her, RUN, RUN TO YOUR COUSIN AND DONT STOP TILL U GET THERE! and then tell the gf of ur cousin say ‘ I SAW YOU ONLINE TODAY!! ‘
i’m pretty sure i saw this picture in a dell ad paper thing.
It’s not an optical illusion. They are clearly STOCK PHOTOS. The first picture they ARE sitting next to each other and he is SUPPOSED to look like he is cheating.
The second photo is taken with a different purpose in mind, the girl is now sitting behind the boy, smiling into the camera, and the boy provides the background.
If there’s any illusion here, it’s the slight implication that there are is a room full of students when only two models are used.
These websites like to increase their advertising hits by adding bogus content to their pages.
This is fake. Because both the guy and girl’s arms are on the same table, and you can clearly see that. But on the other table, it shifts. So evidently, the two pictures aren’t the same.
funny。。
i don’t think that the girl is sitting behind the boy..
oh yeah ur face is bull shit
i think she moved
Definitely he is not behind her. She looks smaller but girls use to be smaller than boys (smarter students but smaller ones). Anyway, it’s easy to replicate this illusion with any camera with zoom capabilities and manual adjustments (adjusting the deph of field by the f/d value, narrowing it enough to put both on focus but not that much so one could keep the third guy out of focus in the background)
the girl is slightly taller than the boy, which means its difficult to see that she is behind, as the perspective is all wrong. that’s my theory, anyway.
I don’t think it is faked, it works like this:
1. Our eyes pick up on that horizontal line of his desk-top
2. She is leaning forward with her elbows hanging a couple of inches over the front edge of her desk. From our point of view they are at the same height as, and we think she is resting them on, his desk. She is pretending to write but under her hands there is nothing.
3. There is almost no guide to perspective in the picture, only the person in black who is probably very small and not far behind them.
4. That interpretation fits with our expectation that she is smaller than him, and that he is looking at her work of course.
Our brain ‘snaps’, subconsciously and almost immediately, to the most plausible interpretation of the scene.