Some photos look shocking for half a second and then turn out to be completely innocent. A heel becomes a bottom, a cactus looks rude, and a hand seems to belong to the wrong person. None of these pictures shows anything improper. Each one relies on an angle, an overlap or a shape that your brain finishes in the most dramatic way it can.
Below are 15 of these photos with a short explanation of what is really going on in each. Try to work out the innocent version yourself before reading the caption. Afterwards, a short section explains why the first impression is so hard to shake, and how photographers make (or avoid) these accidents.
The opening picture is a good warm-up. A woman floats upside down in a pool, and what looks at first like bare skin is simply her raised knees seen from above, with her face below them.
Why your brain sees the rude version first
Psychologists have names for the tricks at work here. Pareidolia is the tendency to see a meaningful shape, often a face or a body, in a vague pattern, the same habit that finds animals in clouds or a face in the Moon. Brain-scanning studies suggest it happens early in perception: face-like objects activate the brain's face-processing area at almost the same speed as real faces.
Gestalt psychology adds a second explanation. We group things that sit close together (proximity), we fill gaps to complete a familiar outline (closure), and we prefer the simplest reading of a scene. When a hand, a leg and a body overlap in a flat photograph, the brain joins them into the quickest story it can find. A camera also removes depth: two objects a metre apart can line up perfectly from one viewpoint, the same effect photographers use on purpose in forced-perspective shots.
So a "dirty mind" is mostly a fast mind. The innocent explanation usually needs a second, slower look at edges, shadows and where each limb actually begins.
Shapes that suggest something else
1. Relax, it is just a heel
This is a close-up of a foot, cropped so that the curve of the heel fills the frame. It comes from a sunscreen advertisement, which is why a small tube of sun cream sits in the corner. The designers deliberately removed every clue to scale, so the eye fills in the most familiar rounded shape it knows.
7. A pair of candle holders
Two little ceramic boys each clutch a tall cream-coloured candle, with open mouths painted on their faces. Seen with the wicks burnt down, the candles take on an unfortunate shape. Kitsch figurines like these were sold as birthday-cake and party decorations; the design simply did not plan for a candle that has been lit a few times.
9. An open book
Shot from low and close, with warm light on the curved pages, an open book becomes an abstract set of soft folds. There are no hard edges or text to anchor it, so the mind supplies a body instead. It is a neat example of closure, the brain completing a shape from very little information.
13. A very unusual palm tree
Palm trees are often trimmed by cutting off the lower fronds, which leaves a bulge of old leaf bases just under the crown. On this tree the trimmed section and the bare trunk below it create a silhouette that has made it a minor internet celebrity. It is just gardening and a sunset.
14. A cactus with bad timing
Some columnar cacti grow side shoots near the base and lean as they get heavier. This one has flopped over the rim of its pot with two small offsets at its base, which is entirely normal plant growth. The fuzz of white spines does not help its reputation.
Hands, arms and people in the wrong place
2. His hand is on the dog's other side
A man poses beside a boxer standing on a stone wall, in what appears to be an old fortified town above a harbour. His arm reaches behind the dog at hip height and disappears from view. He is simply steadying the dog on its far side; the camera angle makes the gesture look far less respectable.
3. Whose hand is this?
Three people stand close together on a street at night. The man has his arm around the woman on the left, and the hand resting near her chest is his, reaching over her shoulder. Because his sleeve blends into the dark clothes, it is hard at first to tell which arm belongs to whom.
4. A hand, not a hip
A group of friends stands at a riverside on a rafting or tubing day. The man in front has his hand raised next to the bikini-clad woman behind him, and at this angle his fingers line up with her hip. In reality there is a gap between them, which the flat image hides.
6. The cameraman's fault
This is a still from a televised women's wrestling bout between China and Ukraine. The referee drops to the mat to check whether a shoulder is pinned, which is part of the job. Filmed from behind, though, his position looks very different from what is happening.
15. Just a bicycle seat
This is an old cycling-clothing advertisement, probably from the late 1970s or 1980s. The man's hand is pressed against the saddle of the bike the woman is sitting on, not against her. Stiff poses like this were common in catalogue photography, and nobody seems to have checked the result.
The puppy and the poster
5. No comment on this one
A woman in orange shorts holds a yoga pose with her legs stretched wide, in front of the famous photograph of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue. From the camera's position, the poster's face lines up exactly with her raised hips. The Einstein picture, usually credited to the press photographer Arthur Sasse, was taken on Einstein's 72nd birthday in 1951 and has become one of the most reproduced portraits of the 20th century.
8. She is just holding a puppy
A woman in a polka-dot dress crouches in a doorway holding a small dark dog against her knees. Because the dog's fur blends with the shadows between her legs, the first glance suggests something else entirely. Look for the dog's ears and eyes, and the picture becomes a simple pet portrait.
Words, timing and a parade
10. Read it twice
A handwritten note taped to a card reader in a shop says the pen is broken and asks customers to sign with a finger instead. The writer simply did not leave a space between "pen" and "is". It is a perfect lesson in why word spacing matters.
11. The weatherman's gesture
This short clip shows a TV meteorologist tracing the forecast path of Tropical Storm John off the coast of Mexico. He uses both hands to show the size of the storm cone. Frozen at the wrong frame, the movement looks like a very different gesture, which is how the clip became a long-lived GIF.
12. Blame the wind
Giant parade balloons are inflated the night before big events and held down with nets and sandbags. Here a Spider-Man balloon, lying face down, appears to be draped over another balloon in a stars-and-stripes costume, while crowds watch. The scene looks like the night-before inflation of a New York Thanksgiving parade, and the pose is down to how the balloons were laid out.
How to train the second look
All of these photos were taken by ordinary people, and many were shared without any intention of being funny. A few habits help you read them, and avoid making your own:
- Follow the edges. Trace an arm from the shoulder to the fingers before deciding whose hand it is.
- Look for scale. Close-ups without a reference object (the heel, the book) invite the brain to guess, and it guesses boldly.
- Watch the background. Posters, signs and patterns behind people can line up with them in unexpected ways, as the Einstein photo shows.
- Take two frames. If you are photographing friends, a small step to the side usually separates overlapping limbs.
The fun lies in the gap between the first impression and the truth. Once you see the innocent version, it is surprisingly hard to see the other one again, and that small shift is a reminder of how much of any photograph is built by the viewer.
Sources: Wikipedia: Pareidolia; Wikipedia: Gestalt psychology; Wikipedia: Forced perspective. Image compilation originally credited to teamjimmyjoe.com; individual photographers unknown.
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