Thank goodness our snow stuck around for several days, because it didn’t occur to me until day four to try ‘hollow face’ illusions. Next time, I need to get out there when it’s fresh, because I think it’ll be easier to capture much more detail.
All I did for these photos was press my hands or face into a patch of soft, untrampled snow. There are some angles to the sun and degrees of sunlight that make the pictures better, but almost no matter what, the pictures make the shapes look convex instead of concave.
The reason it works is that our brains default to what makes the most sense. A face that divots into the snow? Not plausible, so our brain makes it look like it’s poking out.
The same concept works with hands, although not as strongly. A few of the “heart / hand” pictures I took did not look like they were popping out of the snow.
Also the hand on the right here wasn’t very well defined, but this was the best of the many chilly attempts I made.
Please try this at home! Let me know how it goes. I would think it would work in a sandbox or at the beach as well.
Ticklehead 