Photo source: Glass Ball Photography by Paul Reiffer

I felt like a refraction of a person.
So many different shades that layer
to create the illusion of a solid thing.

~Graham Moore

Here is a 5th grade science class lesson: “Refraction is the bending of waves”. When a wave of light, sound or water is passing from one medium to another with a different density, the speed of the wave will change. This causes it to bend.

Real life examples of refraction:

• Light bending when it travels from air through glass or back. This is how prisms can create beautiful rainbows and lenses enlarge the image, but it is also why the straw in your drink looks bent.
  
• Water waves refracting when moving from deep to shallow water. Even on a cape or peninsula, the waves will always end up parallel to the shoreline, on every side.
  
• Sound bending when it travels from the inside of a car to the outside. You will probably still be able to hear the low frequency of music with a strong bass, but the rest of the sounds are warped.

Atmospheric Refraction

Air can have different densities due to temperature or pressure changes. When light crosses from one air density to another, the speed of the waves will also change. This can then result in distorted images as heat haze, mirages and Fata Morgana.

Creating Optical Illusions with Refraction

Refraction is a physical illusion. The illusion happens due to the physical properties of the environment, long before the light hits your eyes. The eyes and the brain are not involved in refraction. This also means that you can photograph these illusions and the effect will stay the same.

Refraction photos are look very creative and mind-bending, but are actually quite simple to pull off. Once you understand the principle of refraction and find some transparent objects with a different density than air (nearly anything is denser than air), you can get creative.

Here are some tips for learning to create your own optical illusions with refraction photography:

Beginner: Use spherical glasses of different shapes with objects in or behind it:

Intermediate: Make use of stationary glass ball lenses, marbles or waterdrops in your images to create beautiful effects.

Special tip: get a pipette or medicine dropper from the pharmacy and place water droplets where you want.

Expert: photograph falling droplets from the faucet or rain.

Pro tip: you need a high speed camera, a wind-free setup and a lot of patience to create this kind of image.

Photo source: Markus Reugels

Accidental optical illusions with Refraction

Here are images from our collection of accidental optical illusions thanks to refraction

Click on the images to see the larger version and read the explanation of the optical illusion and the source/credit of the image.