This is a lovely variation on The Leaning Tower illusion. I can’t believe that these two photographs are identical….
Any idea why it works?
Richard Wiseman
Quirky mind stuff
This is a lovely variation on The Leaning Tower illusion. I can’t believe that these two photographs are identical….
Any idea why it works?
I think your mind expects a single vanishing point in the center of the two photos. If the vanishing point were in the center, then the two tracks would be pointing in different directions.
I saw these and the Pisa shots over the weekend at TAM, but they were slightly different crops. A slight different choice in cropping makes the effect even more exaggerated.
Maybe it’s my blurred morning eyes but they do look identical to me.
I had to look at the Leaning Tower illusion, to understand what it was that I was supposed to see. On a second look I can kind of see it. Perhaps, like Richard M says, a different crop would make a difference.
Me too. At first I didn’t see any difference, it depends where I focus. Not really dramatic for me at any rate.
If you cover one up and look at them one by one it’s obvious that they are identical, but viewing them side by side is very confusing
I find that if I cover up one eye or the other, they look the same. They are only different when I’m looking at them with both eyes, which suggests to me that it’s my depth perception that is messing things up.
I agree with Andrew above, except I think I can change where I “see” or “expect” the vanishing point by focusing on one pic or the other. Of course, since you can’t have both at once, one set of tracks must be going off in some other direction. Since the tracks aren’t “parallel,” they cannot be identical! Wonderful!
That’s funny. I see this all the time. I do a lot of HDR photography which requires taking several exposures of the exact same scene, just at different shutter speeds. Even though I know this happens, the effect is very strong when I see the frames side by side in the organizer. It’s actually a bit annoying. It must have something to do with two eyes seeing from different angles, like when you hold a finger up and blink eyes alternately. That’s my guess.
The bottom of the left line (right image) gives you a point of comparison and your mind automatically uses its built in protractor to compare it to the left image, therefore seeing an acute angle instead of two identical images.
Still, when I cover up one image, I still see the left one more slanted. I have to put a flat edge up against the lines to see they are at the same angle.
My guess is that the brain expects parallel lines to converge. Because the parallel lines between the two photos don’t converge the brain, interpreting a 2d picture as 3d, forces you to see the parallel lines between the two photos as being at different angles
I agree with the rest of the comments here– I find that if I defocus a little and try to see the images as a collection of 2D geometric shapes (instead of 3D with vanishing points) they suddenly look like the same picture again. Imagine you’re looking at a profile shot of a green cliff and they don’t look different anymore
The effect is due to the duplicate vanishing point of the conical perspective. When looking at a shot, you place its vanishing point and the other shot seems “different” refferenced to the first one.
Try not focusing in one photo, just fix the eyes in between. No more optical ilusion…
Watching this as a stereograph shows these are the same.
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How about this: your brain knows that railway tracks are parallel, but in comparing the two pictures adopts the easy option of comparing the right-hand track of the left picture with the left-hand track of the right picture. On the page at least, these are clearly not parallel.
The one with the tower of pisa is more striking. I wonder if it’s cos I recognise it as a tower and try ‘stand it up’ with my mind. The crop one looks more abstract (less cues) so it could just be some non parallel lines.
I’ve seen a similar effect years ago with 2 vanishing point photos of rail tracks with the VP centre frame, it created the effect of a false divergence.
I have to really really look to make them appear different, to me they both do actually appear exactly the same so they look like they should! I have always been able to see the illusion with other versions of this type like the big ben version etc but can’t see it with this one.
Same for me – I saw two identical photographs from the outset. Perhaps I played too many spot-the-difference games when I was a child…?
if you look at the lines in pairs, one pic compared to the other, then they look parallel. making things simpler by breaking them down into parts.
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Strange because they DO look exactly the same to me. I am having a hard time to see them differently.
When I looked at the images initially, they looked slightly different. (The left one showing the same scene, though camera tilted a little towards the ground.) But, after really looking at the two images, the differences disappeared.
Where the two images meet: the comparison of the right side of the left image (where the grass line is lower) with the left side of the right image (where the grass line is highest) may influence the brain to imagine the right image depicting the scene with the view slightly higher.
They look different to me. I guess our brain is trying to compensate for the fact that the two images are viewed from different directions. Therefore, because the images are actually of the same thing, overcompensation leads them to appear different.
I think that we compare by default the wrong areas: The right border of the left pic and the left border of the right one. And there are different angles.
Actually, I see less of an effect here, compared to the leaning towers.
Ok, maybe I’m cheating because I spend a LOT of time looking through a view finder and then obsessing over final products on the computer but…they look exactly the same to me.
Is it the side-by-side that throws you off because I can’t see why they look different.
How interesting that a majority of people don’t seem to have any trouble with this image at all. Nor do I, but I suspect it’s because of my monocular vision (which also prevents me appreciating the best thing you’ve ever seen further down). Maybe it’s a case of most people commenting if they get the unexpected result (i.e. not seeing the illusion)? But that doesn’t seem to be the case for the other illusions on the blog
I have monovision, and the affect is very strong for me. For y’all binocular folks… the affect still works if you close one eye, no?
I agree with earlier comments that it has to do with the vanishing point – the brain assuming that both photos have the same one.
theyre exactly the same!
Not so wise after all, huh?
I wondered if they were the same from the RSS reader. Popping them up here, I tried the stereo-gram view, and they line up exactly. I would imagine the difference comes from one eye expecting something different than it gets by having the right eye focusing on the right image and vice-versa.
[...] Bloody hell, can’t believe that these are the same… This is a lovely variation on The Leaning Tower illusion. I can’t believe that these two photographs are [...] [...]
I was going to say vanishing point too, but someone beat me to it.
And at 5:36 in the morning too. Haven’t you guys got something better to do so early, like, sleep? Or has the time been corrected to our (Aus) time?
Hmm, this doesn’t work on me. They do both look the same. Interesting.
I can’t see a difference, even when I try. I think the identical vertical sidewalks on the left and the identical figures in the distance prevent my brain from believing these are different. The Pisa illusion works on me, this one doesn’t.
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“Bloody Hell” is a little extreme. I wouldn’t have guessed they are different. Look the same to me. There is a crop differenc. The people walking in the upper left – the left person is more cropped off than in the right photo. Just looking at where the tracks intersect wit the border of the images makes it obviously the same.
I’m pretty sure there isn’t a difference in cropping here. If you just compare the two photographs, thats pretty easy to see. Like one of the first people to comment said, it’s most likely because the pictures are side by side and we expect there to be a single vanishing point, but there isn’t so our mind tries to work around that.
If you want it to be more effective, you can copy the image and paste it to its right (and again, and again…) de-zooming to see the whole result
I don’t understand. they are identical to me. if you look at any line in one picture and then change to the other picture and find the corresponding line, you will realize that the 2 lines are parallel. Check for the edge of the field or similar.
I could tell that these two pictures were identical straight away. It took me longer to figure out what the “these” in the title was referring to. I was asking myself “what aren’t the same?” The first thing I noticed was the lady in white and red in the upper left corner. After I saw her, the “sameness” of the two pictures simply unfolded without any effort or thought on my part. However, my experience might be different because I have Asperger’s syndrome (clinical) and I didn’t see the “gestalt” of each photo, but honed in one part, namely the part most attractive to me, the color red.
I keep missing these illusions. The pix look identical to me.
This is an isogram. Look at it with squint-eyes (like we do when looking at isograms) and we get an interesting 3-D of the pic!
Cheers
These images are NOT identical. First thing I noticed is the person to the left of the “lady in red” is not the same in each image. I then measured each image and found the image on the right is 3 pixels wider than the image on the left (224px vs. 221px). Probably a good thing to ensure they are at least identical if we are going to have a conversation about how and why. However, I do realize this is beside the point of the post.
that is amazing. THEY ARE THE SAME! I couldn’t believe it.
This is smart photography
some one took a pic tilted (the two lines that make the track are not equal in length in pic and are in center and major focus of the picture ) and placed the same picture so close that when someone tries to compare tracks ( will always end up comparing wrong end of the tracks ( and sicne they are not equal and tracks are main focus ) two same pictures will look completely different …..
These photos are not identical, actually. The picture on the right, you can see more of the man walking next to the woman, the picture on the left, you can only see half his body.