"Afghan Girl" by Steve McCurry

Probably all of you saw this picture at some point of your life. Titled the “Afghan Girl”, this photo was named the most recognized photograph in the history of National Geographic. Although girl’s name was not known, her picture appeared on the June 1985 cover of the magazine. The image of her face, with a red scarf draped loosely over her head and with her piercing sea-green eyes staring directly into the camera, became a symbol both of the 1980s Afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide. Gula was known throughout the world simply as the Afghan Girl until she was formally identified in early 2002.

Over time, many variations of Steve McCurry’s original photo appeared. At some point even in optical illusion form, as we see below. All I could find about this illusion, is that people can’t seem to look at it for too long. Apparently you get a headache, or become nervous at best. Maybe this isn’t the true nature of this illusion, but it just didn’t make me hallucinate like some other animations did. Wait few seconds for the animation to load (it’s 1MB big), and share your experience afterward.

Anyhow, recently I’ve noticed hysteria among chicks over this vampire saga called Twilight. My girlfriend read them books couple of times, and even forced me to watch actual movie with her. I would be lying if I didn’t say I was bored at best. Don’t know, I simply see it as ordinary vampire move redefined to suit women, but then again – I could be wrong.

Still, if there are any fans of the movie out there, I’ve received these two optical illusions of main actor – Robert Pattinson, so hope you enjoy them!

First one on the right is simple afterimage (if you don’t know how afterimages work, read this first). It works best if you switch your view to blank white screen, after burning the negative image in your retina. Perpetual blinking helps additionally. This one worked great for me! Few more afterimage illusions can be found here.

The second illusion of Robert Pettinson (on your left), is a simple photograph caught in the right moment. When I first saw it, I got impression this dude is wearing some kind of tennis hat and has really alien-ish head anatomy. When you take a closer look, you’ll quickly realize there is actually another person standing behind him.

There, I believe these two illusions weren’t the best ones available, but still we can’t have Greatest Illusions each day. Can we? Btw. check this promotion of Fight Club, done for the 10th anniversary. It will show you the power of Facebook Connect!

Why are they laughing? I would be terrified if some predator jumped on my vehicle!

You’ll have to agree with me on this one; from a certain angle it really looks as if the visitors are about to become lunch. This illusory installation is one of the main attractions at Werribee open range zoo near Melbourne, Australia. Spokesmen of the zoo said once:

The cut-off Land Rover was stuck either side of the glass wall as a bit of fun and it’s proved a big hit – especially with the kids. Everyone wants to get their picture taken looking like they’re going to be eaten.”

Sine Line Optical Illusion

SINCE by now all of you are ware that English isn’t my mother language, there are still some minor details I’d like to check. One of the major steps I surpassed recently is learning the difference between it’s and its. Yeah, it may sound dumb but this little thing made me uncertain for quite some time. It took years before I finally understood how the hell verb read can be written the same in present and past form, even though in each case it’s pronounced differently. I think some of these rules were explained to me by one of my readers. Next on my quest of knowledge is to distinguish the difference between color and colour. Anyone cares to explain? I’ve seen both of them in use.

Concerning the illusion of the day, I posted it to the left. The line you see fluctuating is composed of many vertical lines. Do some of those vertical lines seem to be unequal in length? The strange case here, is that all of the vertical lines in this example are identical! Strange, ayeh?

Henry Lim created this LEGO replica of Relativty by M.C. Escher

Check out more LEGO impossible structures here:

Ad for Russian mobile communication company Megafon, inspired by Sandro Del-Prete

Sandro Del Prete's original "Folded Chessboard". Click to see it in full size.

Check out the thumbnail on your right. It has been cropped, but when you open it in full size, you’ll see the original artwork done by Sandro Del-Prete titled “Folded Chessboard“. This piece of art was created all the way back in 1975, and I’m still not sure how it managed to slip my attention when I posted complete opus of Sandro Del-Prete’s artwork.

"The Terrace" by David Mcdonald. Click to see it.

Anyway, “The Terrace” optical illusion we talked about earlier is JUST ONE in the sea of successful variations of Sandro Del Prete’s “Folded Chessboard”. If you browse the web, and search for Chessboard Illusions you will find dozen of examples. The Terrace was David Mcdonald’s first published illusion. It proved very popular in the last few years, and it can be found all over the web now. The most interesting part is that when compiling “The Terrace”, David took more than sixty purpose taken photographs, and used them to create this image you see on your left. I’m looking forward to hear you thoughts, and be sure to explain which of the three optical illusions posted today you find the best. Also, do you find “in depth articles” like this one I compiled today more interesting, or would you prefer more illusions per day but with less text? An idea struck my head to start posting new optical illusion every 6 hours or so, but then only few lines of text would accompany each article. Share your view on this, I beg you.

Bourdon Optical Illusion

There’s a new optical illusion in town, and its name is “Bourdon Illusion“. The Bourdon  illusion is the apparent “bentness” of the straight edge of a figure consisting of two elongated triangles arranged apex to apex.

Like you see in the image on your left, the upper side of the left-lower triangle is actually aligned with the upper side of the right-upper triangle, the former appears to tilt counterclockwise while the latter clockwise. What we are seeing here is “seemingly bent” type of illusion. But why?

Further, I’ve added three rather subtle illusions, each showing bent lines. In Bourdon’s illusion, to the left, the straight left hand edge looks bent again. In Humphrey’s figure, (central object), the straight, loose line touching the corner of the cube looks bent. In the figure to the right, the straight line interrupted by the corner looks bent.

I don’t think we really understand any of these illusions, and since they are not very dramatic, you don’t notice them very often. There’s probably a different explanation for each. For example, both the left and middle figures show a bent line that is the backbone of two triangles meeting at a point, so you might think “Hello, we’re getting somewhere”. But then you notice that the lines bend in different directions relative to the triangles inside each illusion.

The Bourdon Illusion, Humphrey's Figure and Corner Illusion

Smiling watch illusion

I have just remembered this cheap little trick a friend of mine, Boris told me once. Try looking at any watch store window, or if you are inpatient, and  wish to check this right now, you can use Google image search. Enter the search term “watch”, and search for wrist watches  or clocks. You will notice that 90% of the results (if not all of them); all the analog watches have their hands set on the exact same time – 10:10 (or 22:10  if you prefer). This is NO accident. Sellers do their best to comfort the buyers. Even if it takes making watches smile back at you. Unbelievable, is it? Well, marketers will do just about anything to sell their stuff. Even stranger is that this cheap trick actually works!

Sad watch illusion

Look at the both images in this article. If you liked these two watches, which one would you buy first? Just to remind you, they are both the same. Its just that the second image was rotated by 180 degrees. Weird, huh?