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Reflections – My Answer To "What's Wrong . . . Ver. 2"

I recently posed the question “What’s Wrong With This Picture”blog about a modified landscape photograph of a foggy sunrise in Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge in Goodland, Florida. It turns out Deborah Gray Mitchell, one of the commenters, was right; the image was upside down.

To see the Note click here.To hide the Note click here.
Ms. Mitchell has her own website (www.dgmfoto.com), but several other sites have information about her. Just Google “Deborah Gray Mitchell”.


To be more precise, I flipped the image vertically and took steps to remove ripples in the reflection and such so that the answer wouldn’t be so obvious. You can see the original picture at “Foggy Sunrise” on our website. Now I’d like to discuss reflections and the clues that should have given the answer away.

Reflections

illustration showing different perspective of reflected image
Figure 1: Perspective showing differences between the direct and reflected image

. . . Of Your Subject

First, the reflected image should NOT look like a mirror copy of the unreflected image. The photographer has a different perspective or viewing angle of the reflection. As your high school physics teacher told you, in reflections, the angle of incidence (e.g., α2 in Figure 1) equals the angle of reflection (α1). Because of that, the view you have of the reflected image would be the same as if the subject had been flipped below the reflecting surface, as shown in Figure 1. I know that may sound like I just contradicted myself, but it is the subject itself I just flipped, not the direct image of the subject (which I would get by flipping both the subject AND the viewer). Notice in Figure 1 that in the reflection, the two trees appear the same height, as depicted with red sightline C. In the direct image, the far tree looks higher, as shown by green sightlines B1 and B2. The further away the subject is, the less of a difference this makes.

diagram of perspective and angles associated with reflections
Figure 2: Alternate perspective of reflected view that’s better for showing effects on the sun

. . . Of Celestial Bodies

Here’s another way to look at the effects of reflection; it is as if you had been flipped below the reflecting surface, as shown in Figure 2, instead of flipping the subject. Although possibly less intuitive, this interpretation yields the same results, as shown by lines B1, B2, & C. But it makes the effects of the reflection of the sun more apparent. In the image under consideration, as in most cases, the sun would have been your biggest clue. The sun is 93 million miles from us, but even our closest celestial body, the moon, at under a quarter of a million miles (say 238,900 miles), is much further than what your lens considers to be infinity. All light rays from the sun are virtually parallel (or come in at the same angle), no matter where you are.

To see the Note click here.To hide the Note click here.
This detail helped Eratosthenes figure out how large the Earth was 2,260 years agoexplained and was crucial to celestial navigation. It is also important in the creation of rainbows. I might be addressing that aspect in an article about my quest for a midnight rainbow. Stay tuned! [See My Midnight Rainbow Quest – Tougher Than I Thought.]


This means that the sun will always be higher in the direct view than it appears in the reflection (compare the angle between sun ray A and line B1 to the difference between comparable sightlines D and C).

So There You Have It

I hope that clears things up. This information should make you better at spotting fake reflections. Or as a photographer, it may help you create better forgeries by knowing what mistakes to avoid. Good luck!

Of course, you may share your reflections on this or any related material (or questions) in the comment section below. Thanks for stopping by.

Comments

One response to “Reflections – My Answer To "What's Wrong . . . Ver. 2"”

  1. […] When you shoot someone’s face with a wide-angle lens from a close distance, it will not look the same as when you shoot the same face from far away with a telephoto lens.  An example of this is shown in the fourth image from the top at Choose the Right Lens to Make Flattering Portraits (the only image that’s in color). I’ve seen some experts blame this on lens distortion (as the guy in this otherwise great video at Focal Length for Storytelling – How Lens Choice Affects Your Images. I don’t consider that an example of lens distortion.  I’m not denying that lens distortion exists, but in this case, the subject’s nose really does look bigger, and the ears really do disappear behind the cheeks if you were to close one eye and look at that person from 3″ in front of their face.  I call that a perspective shift and it is strictly a matter of angles and geometry, not lens issues. The “distortion” occurs when you take that image out of context by changing the perspective, which happens quite noticeably when you move an object from very far away to very close (or vice versa) in your image or if you take a 180° panorama, for example, and print/display it small enough to cover only 15° of view.  This perspective shift is virtually impossible to correct in Photoshop, so don’t go too wild while moving things around in your picture.  (Interestingly, it is by a lack of any perspective shift that you can catch somebody who created a reflection in their picture by just adding a flipped subject in post-processing.  The explanation of this tangent to today’s topic would require a separate article, however.  [See Reflections – My Answer To “What’s Wrong . . . Ver. 2”.]) […]

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