Good Distortions

With a wide angle lens, the vertical lines distort by diverging outwards when you hold the camera pointing down. You can use this effect to your advantage in your compositions. In this picture, I let the vertical candle and worshiper form a V-shape. The elements became an inverted triangle when the arm and joss sticks connect with the flame. Only problem with a wide angle lens is that almost everything falls into sharp focus. This is the time to use Snapseed’s Foggy Filter plus Vignetting selectively to feather the messy background. Photographed with the Olympus OM-D and Panasonic 7-14mm UWA lens at a Hungry Ghost festival prayers session in Hot Springs New Village just now.

Good Distortions

Growing Horns

Remember when you were in primary school and all you wanted was to have a nice picture of yourself taken? All your classmates wanted was to place funny gestures behind your head? This group of kids in a school in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) made sure no one had a photo taken without horns. Turned out to be better and I had as much laughs as they did 🙂

Growing Horns

Brain Freeze

The brain is confused when it cannot determine the visual logic or objective reality of a scene, at a glance. Cognitive recognition comes about via familiar optical perception of the horizontal plane. Here we have a guy in a vertical dive and his friend is looking up at him leisurely. What is going on? To unlock the illusion, just rotate your phone. No small feat by world freestyle motocross champion Eigo Sato and friends in Malaysia. Moment frozen with the Olympus OM-D.

Brain Freeze