Confusing photos are ordinary pictures that the brain reads wrongly at first glance. Usually one of four things is going on: two objects line up so that their outlines merge, something near the camera looks giant next to something far away, a painted or printed surface imitates a real scene, or a familiar shape appears where it does not belong. Once you spot the trick, the picture snaps back to normal.
Your visual system is built for speed. It guesses where one object ends and another begins, assumes light comes from above, and judges size from distance. Those shortcuts work almost all the time, which is exactly why a well-timed photo can beat them. Below are 25 pictures that went viral on Imgur, Reddit and the Russian site Pikabu, grouped by the kind of trick behind them. Each one is credited to the person who shared it, and each caption explains what is really happening, so you can practise seeing through the illusion yourself. Try to solve each picture before you read its caption.
Bodies that do not add up
These are alignment illusions. The brain links a head, arms and legs that happen to sit next to each other, even when they belong to different people or animals.
1) Who is holding whom?
A young woman in glasses rides piggyback on a young man in a floral cap in a DVD rental shop, while a boy peers in from the side. Their arms cross around each other's necks and their legs overlap, so it is hard to tell whose limbs are whose. Follow the blue socks down from the knees and the pairing becomes clear.
2) Nice legs!
In a study area, a man in a white shirt leans over a seated friend, and a woman in denim shorts and white heels stands directly behind him. Her legs line up perfectly with his upper body. The trick only works from this angle: a step to either side would separate the two people.
3) A kitchen centaur
A woman chops vegetables at a kitchen island while a black dog stands behind the counter. The counter hides her legs and the dog's head, so her upper body seems to sit on the dog's back. It is a classic occlusion illusion, the same effect painters use when one object partly covers another.
13) Standing on a stranger's shoulder
Two friends take a selfie in the gardens of Versailles, with the Latona Fountain and the Grand Canal behind them. A woman far in the background happens to appear right at shoulder height, so she seems to be standing on one of them. Because both are in focus, the brain does not register the distance between them.
17) A shadow that changes the shape
A man in black clothes stands in a sunny square full of pigeons, and dark shadows from the photographers fall across the pavement around him. Where the shadows meet his black clothing, the brain struggles to tell body from shade, so his outline seems to take a different shape. Dark clothes against dark shadows are a common recipe for this kind of confusion.
Painted, printed and carved tricks
Some illusions are made on purpose. Artists and sign-writers use shading and perspective to make a flat or solid surface look like something else.
4) Kegs that seem to be falling out
Seen through a rainy windscreen, a lorry ahead appears to have its back open and beer kegs tumbling toward the road. The kegs are printed on the rear doors as a large photographic wrap. Drivers following it, as the original caption joked, may well feel nervous.
8) A painted fish in a glass
A red and turquoise betta fish seems to swim in a large glass of water, with an artist's hand adding the final highlights. The whole scene is a hyperrealistic painting on a flat canvas. The reflections on the rim and the bending of light in the water are what convince the eye.
14) A van or a sports car?
A tall red camper van has the black silhouette of a low sports car painted along its lower half. From the side, the eye picks out the sleek car first, and the van above seems to be a separate vehicle. It is a fun custom paint job rather than a real illusion of physics.
15) A tree made of missing bricks
On a brick wall in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the Spanish street artist Pejac painted a tree whose branches look as if they are made from bricks that have fallen out. In fact no bricks are missing: he sprayed dark brick-shaped shadows through a stencil, as the second photo shows. The 2018 work is called Fossil.
18) Lace made of wood
What looks like a folded length of lace or crochet is a block of wood, carved into floral and mesh patterns. The soft-looking folds come from the carver shaping the surface, not from fabric. Wood that is carved this thin and this fine takes great patience.
25) A Venetian view on the blinds
Through the slats of a window blind, gondolas bob in the water of Venice, with a church dome on the horizon. Look closely and the scene does not continue between the slats: it is printed or painted onto the blinds themselves. There is a signature in the bottom corner, a clue that this is artwork, not a real view.
Scale, distance and the sky
These pictures fool our sense of size. Without clear clues about distance, a small object close to the lens can dwarf a huge one far away.
9) A stadium that looks like a departing UFO
Low winter fog hides the base of the stadium on Krestovsky Island in Saint Petersburg, leaving only its domed roof and tall masts floating in the haze. The Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa's winning design was even nicknamed "The Spaceship". The stadium opened in 2017 and is home to the football club Zenit.
12) A giant insect over the city
A green grasshopper landed on the outside of a car windscreen, and the camera focused past it on the clouds and shrubs. Because the insect is blurred and sits against the sky, the brain treats it as far away, and therefore enormous. This is forced perspective, the same trick tourists use to "hold up" the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
16) A tanker hanging in mid-air
A red-hulled tanker appears to float above the water while spectators watch from a railing. Two things can cause this. On hazy days the sea and sky blend into one colour, so the horizon disappears. And in a superior mirage, cold air near the water bends light so that a distant ship appears raised above the horizon.
20) A galaxy after the storm
After a thunderstorm, a thin band of light glows on the horizon under dark clouds, with a few town lights below. Cropped this way, it resembles photos of a galaxy seen edge-on. Our brains are quick to match new images to shapes we already know.
Nature in disguise
Pareidolia is the tendency to see faces and figures in random shapes. Trees, snow and stones are full of it.
10) A hedgehog that is really a dog
A husky-type dog lies curled up outside while snow settles on its thick coat. With its face tucked in and its back coated in white flakes, it looks like a giant hedgehog. Northern breeds such as huskies and malamutes are so well insulated that snow can rest on them without melting.
11) A tree casting a spell
A tall weeping conifer by a road has grown into the shape of a hooded figure raising both arms. Weeping trees droop because their branches are too flexible to hold themselves up, which can create strange silhouettes like this one.
19) A flower bed that is really a bicycle dump
From the air, this looks like a huge planting of blue and green shrubs. It is a mass of bicycles piled together, with their coloured frames and baskets standing in for flowers and leaves. It appears to be one of the dumps of shared bikes that grew in Chinese cities around 2017 and 2018, when bike-sharing companies expanded too fast.
21) Sea glass like a handful of sweets
Pieces of frosted orange, pink and purple glass fill a palm and look like boiled sweets. This is sea glass: fragments of bottles and jars that waves and sand have tumbled for years, smoothing the edges and giving the surface its frosted look. The sea does not sharpen glass, it rounds it.
24) A tree that dances
Lit by a flash at night, a pale tree trunk bends like a dancer's body, with two branches raised as arms. The leaves around it act like a costume. It is another example of pareidolia, our habit of reading human forms into nature.
Rotations, swaps and frames
5) Gravity seems to have changed
A cyclist in a blue kit appears to cling to a concrete wall with one hand while the bike hangs below. The photo was taken from above and turned on its side, so the "wall" is almost certainly the ground. Rotating a picture removes the cues our brain uses to find down.
© MassiveIndependence / reddit
6) Zach Braff and Dax Shepard swap faces
The actors Zach Braff and Dax Shepard shared a face-swap of themselves in 2018. The joke is that the two pictures look almost identical, because the friends already resemble each other. Look at the hair and the hat, which stay put while the faces move.
7) A window that looks like a painting
A small window in a warmly lit room frames a green hill, a few trees and a red roof. The deep sill and white frame act like a picture frame, and the evenly lit landscape looks flat. It is a real window, which is why this kind of view is sometimes called a living painting.
22) When the water is still freezing
On a beach, a real man bends forward beside a ladder and a round hatch drawn in the wet sand. The drawing's shading makes the hatch look like a pool or manhole he has just climbed out of. Sand artists use perspective tricks like this, and they last only until the next tide.
23) A city of radiators
Rows of old cast-iron radiators stand upright in a salvage yard. Seen from above, their ribbed columns look like tower blocks and the gaps like streets. Many of these heavy radiators are saved from old buildings and restored, because they hold heat well.
How to decode a confusing photo
- Trace one outline. Pick a sleeve, a leg or an edge and follow it all the way. Where it stops is where the object stops.
- Check the focus. If something is blurred while the background is sharp, it is probably very close to the lens.
- Look for the horizon. A missing or tilted horizon often means the photo is rotated, hazy or cropped.
- Describe it plainly first. Saying "two shapes line up" before "a centaur" keeps your mind open to the real arrangement.
Coincidences in photos work in a similar way. For more, see 12 Coincidence Photos and the Stories Their Captions Suggest.
Sources: photos credited above to their Imgur, Reddit and Pikabu posters; Colossal, Trees on the Streets of New York by Pejac; Pejac, outdoor works; Wikipedia, Krestovsky Stadium; Wikipedia, Superior mirage.
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