Has anyone here tried and succeeded at this kind of perspective distortion/optical illusion? If so I'd be curious as to how you did it.
I am not sure I understand what you are asking.
I am assuming that you are not simply interested in higher magnification photography but are more interested in how to make an object appear larger than it really is.
If so, then you are correcting in thinking that you need to distort the perspective. The question is which perception to distort and how to distort it.
The human viewer perceives differences in size and distance by making sub-conscious assumptions about the image. These assumptions are ingrained in our internal image processing over the years of evolution. Optical illusions simply take these sub-conscious assumptions and mess with them. You will need to do the same if you want to "fool" the viewer in perceiving an object to be bigger than it really is in relation to the surrounding objects.
Common assumptions and what you can do with them to mess with people.
1. Perspective convergence -- With few exemptions, parallel lines or an object will not be rendered parallel in an image. The classic image of railroad tracks (which ARE parallel in real life) converging in the distance at a vanishing point on the horizon
a. Construct lines that we would assume to be parallel but are not so that the convergence is different
b. Make parallel lines converge not on the horizon or expected vanishing point
This can throw off the perspective perception of the viewer which you can use to distort the perception of the viewer
2. Relative size of known objects. This is the primary tool you will use. Humans garner size information by comparing the unknown with the surrounding knowns. This is commonly represented in documentary photography by including an object of known size next to the object being photographed. This object of known size can be a ruler, a hammer (common with geologists), a pen or anything that the viewer can recognize and is familiar with.
a. The big assumption is that the reference object is actually the size of what it represents. This assumption allows you as the artist to have considerable control over how your viewer perceives size.
b. Take your object that you want to appear bigger and put it next to a small reference object that is actuality smaller than what is normally perceived. If you use a pen in the shot, don't use a normal pen, use a special scaled down model of a pen. The viewer will then assume that the pen IS a standard pen and sub-unconsciously use that assumption to misinterpret the size of your object... just like you intended.
How well does this work? Rather well actually. Have you ever seen the movie Casablanca? The end scene at the airport you can see a big aircraft with a ground crew working on it.....but it was filmed on a small sound stage? How did they do this. They used a scale model of an aircraft and little people (I dislike the term midget) working on it. As the viewer, you assume that the airplane is of a real size (but that can be faked) but using actual humans makes this illusion even better as there is a natural assumption that humans are of a standard size. As long as the scale of the humans (little people) matches the scale of the aircraft (scaled down model) the illusion works very well
The key for your photography is to make sure that the scaled models of the reference object are as realistic as possible so that the viewer will naturally fall into their own assumption trap.
3. Overlay displacement. This is more difficult but can have a drastic affect on the viewers perception of size. Look around you. You will most likely see objects in front of other objects. In that case the object in front will overlay or block a portion of the object behind it. It is so self-evident that most people do not even think about it. You can use the perception assumptions of this to distort the sizes of objects in your photograph. There are two different but related assumptions with overlay displacement that you can use.
a. An object that is in front of another object will obscure a portion of the rear object
b. If you have two identical objects, with one in front of the other, the front object will be perceived as being bigger and the rear object perceived as being smaller. Things that are closer look bigger than things far away (duh!) If our brains use the number 2 assumption above and think that the objects are actually the same size, our brains will override this perception and simply perceive that we have two identical objects one is just closer than the other.... unless you are an evil artist making an optical illusion involving Relative Size of Known Objects and Overlay Displacement. (cue evil laugh)
Continuing with overlay displacement, you can take a picture of two objects where one is partially in front of the other and therefore blocking (overlaying) part of the rear object. Using Photoshop you can remove the front overlay portion so that the object in the rear will appear to overlay the object in the front. This by it self won't do much, but if you combine numbers 2 and 3 and use a rear object that is a scaled model of an assumed known object size you can really mess with the viewers perception and make something look bigger than it is.
The critical part of an optical illusion is, strangely, making it look realistic.
I can take a picture of a cat and make it appear bigger than an elephant by using these and other techniques, but few people will be fooled as everyone knows that a cat is not bigger than an elephant. So the reaction of the viewer will be "nice optical illusion" which means that I failed.
But I can make a 1 caret gem look like a 2 caret gem because everyone knows that 2 caret gems exist. That's the key to optical illusions... keeping it realistic enough so that the viewer does not know it is an optical illusion.
I hope this was clear. There are much more in-depth and mathematical explanations in photogrammetry and photographic interpretation manuals if you really want to get deep into it.
A search on You Tube will garner endless enjoyable hours of how people construct optical illusions which use these and other techniques. They all are based on taking an assumption that a viewer has and changing it. The more self-evident the assumption, the easier it is manipulate.
A good search term for using The Googles is "Forced Perspective". The hits you will get will show you the full range of forced perspective from the really bad to the shockingly realistic.
If you want to see how it is done right check out the work of Michael Paul Smith. He has been doing this for over 25 years. Try not to be discouraged once you find out that he uses a cheap point and shoot camera.
Good luck with it
