Impossible Images
Variety is the spice of life, and it is certainly part of what I enjoy about photography. Having a camera is an excuse for being anywhere and examining anything. Those of you who follow my blog or my photostream on Flickr will know that my subjects range from kids and flowers through the night landscape. I’m also intrigued with the idea of extending photography via software manipulation to create images of the impossible.
I’m pleased to announce that Spirals, one of my images of the impossible, has won a place in the prestigious MacWorld 2009 digital imaging exhibition.
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The image may be impossible, but it should not be implausible. To achieve this sleight of eye requires, as artist M.C. Escher put it, “deception.” Plausible impossibility tends to the opposite of plausible deniability: until you look very carefully it just might be for real, but it’s clearly imaginary if you give it thought.
My favorite impossible images often involve twisting stairs like Calling Alice (below) or infinite progressions to an impossible vanishing point, like World without End (far below).
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In the photocomposition below, I sandwiched larger and smaller versions of the progression of doors together to make an apparently endless series. The doors do go on to the bitter end, namely the single pixel level.
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January 12th, 2009 at 10:42 am
[...] it’s hard to stop when you’re on a sleep deprivation and good food binge fueled by Macworld and my birthday weekend, so why not invert the inversions? When does it ever [...]
January 16th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
[...] months ago I was contacted on Flickr by Sophie Addison, and asked to share my image Spirals in a book Sophie was creating titled It’s a Beautiful World. All proceeds were to support the [...]
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:06 pm
[...] days I feel I’m channeling Vincent van Gogh, others it is M.C. Escher, and today I am channeling René Magritte and his painting The Wrestler’s [...]
April 24th, 2009 at 11:58 am
[...] I belive that photographers need to look at visual artists beyond photography (for more on this topic, see this interview with me). M.C. Escher has obviously influenced my composites. [...]
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:03 pm
[...] noted: a photo composite created from the shavings left after sharpening a [...]
July 17th, 2009 at 11:10 am
[...] than up, and likely would require physical model making or virtual compositing. A couple of my impossible images such as Calling Alice or Endless Stair might come close. (Check out my Impossible set on [...]