Forced perspective photography is a simple and effective way to mess with viewers’ eyes and brains by playing on perceived visual perception. Following up on last year’s awesome assemblage of 15 Phenomenal Forced-Perspective Photos, this new group of forced perspective images explores the many ways creative cameramen (and camera-women) add a little “faux” to their photography.

The Sun is There!

(images via: Design Tutorials 4U, Dr. Marvin Monroe, Denzomag and The Berry)

Is there anything more symbolic of life, warmth and permanence then the Sun? Of course not, our friendly neighborhood star, burning brightly for billions of years, is huge enough to swallow our humble Earth and everything on it with nary a burp to show for it.

(images via: Mitra Mirshahidi, Piccsy and Maybemaq)

Maybe that’s why the Sun figures so prominently in so many forced perspective photos. Big, powerful stuff scares us, and we have an innate need to cut such potentially threatening, uncontrollable entities down to size… like, umm, soccer ball size.

Cloud Computing

(images via: Delacorr, Vishalgadkari’s Posterous, Leptossomico, and The Chobble)

Ever gazed deep into a typical “Simpsons Sky” filled with fluffy white clouds and noticed some clouds that look like, well, anything BUT clouds? Forced perspective photographers take pareidolia, as it’s technically termed, and run with it.

(images via: Examples Of, Stuandgravy and Design Tutorials 4U)

The fact that clouds themselves can look like smoke, shaving cream, a bank of shimmering snow and much more helps our intrepid photogs create some amazing & amusing image compositions. I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now, and still somehow, it’s clouds illusions I recall. I really don’t know clouds at all.

Spray You, Spray Me

(images via: Just Stuff I Found, Stuant63 and 2Experts)

Spraying water? Wet just a second while I get my camera. From foaming fountains to wispy waterfalls, flowing water in all its forms is often a large-scale phenomenon providing copious opportunities for forced perspective photography.

(images via: WebResauce and ATBaker)

Flowing water from almost any source typically has a counterpart in miniature: spurting founts and spitting louts, tumbling tributaries and trickling refreshment poured into one’s cup – or more directly. It’s all wet, all right, and all good.

Un-Boliviable!

(images via: Rovemag)

Bolivia’s otherworldly Salar de Uyuni salt flats make an ideal backdrop for forced perspective photography. The high-altitude location’s distinctive lighting, soft colors and far horizons lend themselves to forced perspective photography’s strange content, almost making the subjects of the photos seem quite natural… you might say, unforced. The images above were composed and captured by Kevin Landry, OllieTheBastard, Funkz and Where There Be Dragons.

(images via: Design Tutorials 4U, Lynnith and Denzomag)

It’s likely that these odd images have inspired more than a few budding photographers to try their hand at forced perspective photography, in the process enriching and enlivening the field.

Hand of the Giants

(images via: Chaval Brasil, 11Even and Wiganer.net)

One compositional theme common to many forced perspective photographs is The Giant Hand – actually a normal-sized hand and arm in the near field overlapping some distant object. In real life, our depth perception and stereoscopic vision cue our brains to discern the true positions and distances of objects in the field of vision. Photographers with a careful grasp on differential focus and precise object placement can trick the brain, at least initially.

(image via: Valdenstein)

The triptych above illustrates one of the most difficult types of forced perspective photos, in which the main near and far elements must retain their faux-interactive alignment over a short period of time. We’ll never know how many times the swimmer performed his back dive until the photographer could nail three consecutive shots.

Taste The Rainbow

(images via: ClickClickClickClick and Porcelain Poetry)

Get this guy some Skittles, stat! Rainbows rank among nature’s most beautiful phenomena and pose a unique challenge for photographers looking for an unusual forced perspective shot… just how far away is a rainbow, anyway? AS far as the old Irish legend of there being a pot at the end of every rainbow, well, those cursed leprechauns never did say what KIND of a pot it was, now did they?

(images via: KPStahmer, Kotlus and JPG Mag)

Since you never can get enough “rainbow over the outhouse” photos, here are a few more. The sacred and the profane, together once again!

Hat Trick

(images via: Jason W and Zphaze)

Grasping the Eiffel Tower between your fingertips? Ho hum. Wearing the big hat outside Angel Stadium in Anaheim? Home run! Of course, the grinning fan above isn’t really wearing that giant hat… the Giants play at AT&T Stadium anyway.

“I Can’t Believe I Ate The Whole Thing”

(images via: Telovation, Jasoneppink and Snapshots From My Mind)

Hungry for more forced perspective photos? Well step right up, sit right down, and open wide. Photographers seem to take unusual pleasure in producing images of us eating really, really big things.

(image via: Natural Artificial and Rianpie)

You can keep your Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, we’ve got us a Gargantuan Pumpkin! Once hollowed out (and how long would THAT take?), you can build a bonfire inside for Halloween and bake pumpkin pies for a small city. As for the Corncob Water Tower in Rochester, MN, you just knew a photo like the one above was going to be taken sooner or later.

Behind the 8-Ball

(images via: Lokesh Kumar, Ken B Miller and Aksfa.net)

AC/DC might have big balls but with just a little forced perspective photographic wizardry you can too! Then again, you could always be Bigfoot instead.

The Glitterati

(images via: Gencept, Buzzfeed and Impactlab)

As mentioned, it can be difficult to maintain a sense of consistent focus when composing a forced perspective photograph. Sometimes it doesn’t matter; in fact it’s desirable. The small selection of “sparkly” shots above shows what can happen when distorted, out-of-focus light adds a little extra unexpected content to a photographic composition.

(image via: =PORG)

Forced perspective as a first choice? Why not… photography is great for capturing reality but the medium has so much more to offer when the subject is artistic expression. Go ahead, give it a “shot” sometime!

It’s a case of life imitating art: photographs of full-sized objects or scenes that look like tiny, perfectly constructed models. Tilt-shift photography, whether using a real tilt-shift lens or Photoshop, creates a “fake miniaturization” effect that tricks the eye with shallow depth of field and high camera angles. Take a look at these 15 images and you’ll find yourself wondering how the artist convincingly reproduced such tiny objects before realizing that they’re larger than they appear.

Smallest Shovel Ever?

(image via: juan pablo)

Looking at this photo by Juan Pablo Mejia, it’s hard to believe it’s not a real miniature. Down to their little hard hats and tools, this construction scene seems like a bunch of meticulously sculpted and painted figurines with power lines as thin as thread.

Norway’s Nidaros Cathedral

(image via: reitstoen)

The trees on this image of Norway’s Nidaros Cathedral look as if they were crafted from lichen, but artist Ola Endra Reitstoen created it by first making an ‘alpha channel’ to represent the distance to the objects in the photo, starting with a gradient from white to black “and then tweaking the gradient to better represent the distance to the buildings in a better way,” she explains “Then apply the Lens Blur filter to the original, and use the ‘alpha channel’ as a depth map.” Reitstoen provided the depth map to demonstrate her technique.

Painting the Town

(image via: mwest)

The saying ‘painting the town red’ gets a new meaning in this image by Matt West, in which the photographer has used both forced perspective and selective blurring to make it look as though he is touching up a tower in the town of Loughborough, UK.

Casita

(image via: eljoja)

Progressively blurring a photo from the center out toward the top and bottom is one of the most effective ways of producing a fake miniature, as seen in this photo.

Tiny New York

(image via: ian payne)

As in this image of New York by Ian Payne, the shallow depth of field makes it seem like a close-up photo, tricking the eye into believing those yellow cabs are the size of a quarter.

So Good, It Looks Fake

(image via: rolo hauck)

To achieve sharp focus on the front tower, photographer Rolo Hauck cut and pasted the foreground and blurred the rest.

Miniature Airport

(image via: disparkys)

The photographer says “Flying out of Gatwick Airport in London, UK. Knowing that tilt-shifting works best with this kind of shots, I experimented a couple of hours till I found a satisfactory result.”

Little Bilbao

(image via: groomit41)

The Guggenheim Bilbao spider sculpture is reduced to the size of a real spider in this fake-miniature photo. The artist used a pre-made filter to achieve the effect.

Duck Rock

(image via: georgeryon)

Even the iPhone can create fairly convincing fake-miniature photos with nothing but a simple filter, like this one by George Ryon.

A Tiny Green Path

(image via: sebastian b-b)

Handrails that look as thin as wire and the intense green of the foliage enhance the miniature effect in this image by Sebastian Bibb-Barrett, taken in Oregon.

Niagara Falls Dock

(image via: metaphors)

Looking at this image of passengers boarding a Niagara Falls tour boat, it’s easy to find yourself marveling over  the incredibly realistic sea, or wondering what they used to create such tiny figurines of people, before remembering that it’s not actually a miniature.

Santorini

(image via: steve parkinson)

The blocky white architecture of Santorini, combined with the island’s saturated green landscape and brilliant blue sky, produce a stunning fake tilt-shift look in this photo by Steve Parkinson.

Cute Construction Equipment

(image via: stroke_and_distance)

How can such a large piece of equipment be artificially reduced to the size of a toy? This crane looks like it belongs in the hand of a child.

Street Scene

(image via: zevotron)

More seemingly fake plastic trees, along with a toy DHL truck, in this photo by Scot Campbell.

Toy Tram

(image via: roywkw)

A double-decker tram in Hong Kong could easily pass as part of a toy train set in this image by Roy Wong.

Mini World League Volleyball

(image via: pguedes)

Those wanting to achieve the fake miniature look without an image editing program can get a similar result from a website called Tilt Shift Maker, which was used to edit this photo by Paulo Guedes.

How do you make a full-sized commercial airplane look like a toy, or give the illusion that your human subject is touching a cloud? Photoshop is an easy answer, but a much more low-tech method produces results that are just as amazing: forced perspective photography. Just as in filmmaking when miniatures convincingly stand in for buildings, landscapes or fantastical creatures, the trick is all in positioning, lighting and timing.

The Old Tower of Pisa Trick

(image via: martyportier)

Everyone is familiar with this iteration of the forced-perspective photography trick: pretending to hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It’s all about where you place your subject in relation to the background. At least this photographer took a different tack, giving his model a ‘relaxed’ pose.

Pluck a Sphere of Light

(image via: mr. moog)

Take that same idea and apply it in a new way and you’ve got the kind of photo that makes you look twice. To achieve this effect, photographer Lee ‘Mr. Moog’ used shallow focus and allowed the lens of his camera to render out-of-focus points of lights as little floating spheres.

Mind Your Step

(image via: maybemaq)

Is that the foot of a giant descending from the sky to crush a priceless historical site into bits of gravel? From this angle, it sure looks like it.

The Scariest Watering Can Ever

(image via: froodmat)

When a watering can is big enough to suck you up into its spout, you’d better run.

Blowing in the Wind

(image via: jeppe olsen)

Photographer Jeppe Olsen took a whole set of forced perspective photos out in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia, which provide a minimalist background ideal for deceptive shots like this one, making both the foreground and background subjects stand out equally.

Fixing the Washington Monument

(image via: mjsmith01)

What kind of monstrous crane would be required to pluck the Washington Monument right out of the ground? The silhouetted crane and illumination of the monument make this photo even more effective.

Miniature Woman

(image via: alexandre duarte)

Forced perspective photography takes more than just selective focus or using the blur/sharpen tool in Photoshop. Clever positioning and light are also crucial elements in a successful photograph.

Tiny Plane Crash

(image via: maybemaq)

In some cases – like this one – timing is everything. No special effects or Photoshop necessary.

Hold On Tight!

(image via: emikw)

One of the famed natural formations in Arches National Park, Utah is in the palm of this photographer’s hand when sharp focus is maintained on the entire image.

Giant Jesus and the Toy Plane

(image via: david leeth)

Even 900-foot-tall stone Jesus gets bored sometimes, so having a toy plane to play with is a plus.

Toy Cars, or Giant Man?

(image via: erkannix)

This is definitely one of those photos that make you go, “what?” It’s hard to tell exactly how the photographer achieved this effect, but according to his Flickr, there was no Photoshop involved.

Please Don’t Fall, Cloud

(image via: p0rg)

The artist says “I kept messing it up and not aligning myself ( I was using tripod & self timer) and did it about 10 or so times. When I was happy with the result, I turned and saw that an old man walking his dog had stopped to watch my bizarre antics. He smiled and walked off. I must have looked completely mad because he was not in line with the cloud, so he would have seen my press my camera, run like a madman to the same spot 10 times and preform a melodramatic pray to god.”

Hanging Out

(image via: laura deangelis)

“Three years ago, I picked this guy up, put him in my pocket and claimed him as my own,” says photographer Laura DeAngelis.

Splitting Headache

(image via: the moronic inferno)

Believe it or not, this photo wasn’t staged. Photographer Dave Brownlee calls it ‘serendipity’ that the heads and bodies of four separate people just happened to line up so well.

Puzzling Place, Indeed

(image via: richard heeks)

In this case, it’s the location that’s providing the illusion, not a trick of photography. The Puzzle Museum in Keswick, England contains an oddly-shaped room with a sloping ceiling, walls and floor so that from a certain vantage point, turning one person into a terrifying giant.