Here is a Photographic Puzzle for you all...

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

I took this shot a few years ago and never thought too much about it after I'd finished working on it, but then the other day when I was reviewing some old files, I came across it once again and it started to make me think, how is that possible?

So here is the puzzle that is starting to make my head hurt:

If you look at the boat in the foreground and its mirrored reflection, which is just a simple reflection of a small boat with an outboard motor on a flat calm loch, then how come you can also see the top of the boat in the reflection, when the water the reflection appears upon is never above the boat?

In other words, how can a reflection on the water below the boat, show part of the upper surface of the boat?

To explain how the shot was taken, as this might help even though it hasn't helped me, I was stood on a flat pontoon type of bridge about 5 feet above the water and the camera was mounted on a tripod at about 5 foot above the bridge, so the camera's viewpoint from the water is around 10 foot and the boat was about 50 or 60 foot out into the loch in front of me.

I am sure someone on here with a brain much larger than mine will be able to answer this conundrum, but for the life of me I can't see how this is possible.

Oh and if you are a scientist or something and you know the answer, can you use simple descriptions that I might be able to understand please 

Thanks..

Dave

[Aram Hăvărneanu]

I am sorry, I don't understand the confusion. I see nothing wrong with the picture.
 

[Frans Waterlander]

Look at it this way: the top of the boat reflects the ambient light in all directions (just like any other part of the boat BTW); some of this light reflects in the direction of the photographer (you), clears the side of the boat, hits the water and then reflects off of it and voila, you and your camera see the top of the boat reflected in the water.

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

I am sorry, I don't understand the confusion. I see nothing wrong with the picture.

Hi Aram,

No I didn't say that there was anything wrong with the shot, I am asking how can something that I would have thought was hidden from the water, be reflected by the water?

Look at it this way: the top of the boat reflects the ambient light in all directions (just like any other part of the boat BTW); some of this light reflects in the direction of the photographer (you), clears the side of the boat, hits the water and then reflects off of it and voila, you and your camera see the top of the boat reflected in the water.

Thanks Frans for your answer, but I am sorry if I sound completely thick here, but are you saying that the reflected light from the top of the boat, is somehow bent around from the top of the boat onto the water and is then reflected into the camera?

I am not trying to obstinate here, I really just don't get how this trick of the light can work, because if the water is lying on a flat plane (as it obviously is) and the boat is sat on top of it, then how can anything above the flat plane of the water and that is therefore hidden from the water, then be reflected in it?

But after saying all this, perhaps it is just me and this conundrum has hit blank spot in my brain or something.

Thanks again guys 

Dave

[Jeremy Roussak]

Dave, I think you are falling into the trap of thinking that the reflection is "real", in that it has an existence independent of your perception. It isn't and it doesn't.

The light which you see as the reflection (a virtual image) has travelled from the tip of the boat towards you and obliquely downwards, towards the water. It has struck the water and been reflected upwards to your eyes. The reason that you can see the tip in the reflection is that the path taken from the tip towards the water is sufficiently oblique (because you are a long way away) for it to clear the boat and hence to reach the water.

The reflection that you see doesn't lie directly below the boat; it comes from water behind the boat, nearer to you than the rear of the boat. So the point of the prow isn't "hidden" from it.

Does that help? I'd attach a diagram if I thought my drawing would do anything other than make things more obscure.

Jeremy

[RSL]

Right on the money, Jeremy.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Nice tries, but no cigar.

Interesting question, though.

I tried to replicate it. In the first image, done with a 28mm lens (eq.) close to the camera, the wick is not visible, as you would expect from something that is directly above the reflecting surface and obscured by the bottom of the candle.

However, when I extended the hand holding the mirror (to mimic the further-away vantage point) and used a 56mm lens (eq.), the wick is now visible, which in the first scenario appears physically impossible.

[Ivophoto]

Nice tries, but no cigar.

Interesting question, though.

I tried to replicate it. In the first image, done with a 28mm lens (eq.) close to the camera, the wick is not visible, as you would expect from something that is directly above the reflecting surface and obscured by the bottom of the candle.

However, when I extended the hand holding the mirror (to mimic the further-away vantage point) and used a 56mm lens (eq.), the wick is now visible, which in the first scenario appears physically impossible.

And the reflection of the wick is near to the mirror frame in the second image. In the first image the reflection of the cup is not over the middle of the mirror. This is what Jeremy is saying.

Hans Holbein used the perspective rule that create this confusion to his benefit in the painting ‘the ambassadors ‘

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

And the reflection of the wick is near to the mirror frame in the second image. In the first image the reflection of the cup is not over the middle of the mirror. This is what Jeremy is saying...

Huh!?

[Ivophoto]

Huh!?

Hm, my crappy English doesn’t help. 

[Ivophoto]

Huh!?

If you would keep the mirror flat and little under your eye level, the reflection will even touch the frame of the mirror close to you, not?

[Ivophoto]

Huh!?

See?

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

Nice tries, but no cigar.

Interesting question, though.

I tried to replicate it. In the first image, done with a 28mm lens (eq.) close to the camera, the wick is not visible, as you would expect from something that is directly above the reflecting surface and obscured by the bottom of the candle.

However, when I extended the hand holding the mirror (to mimic the further-away vantage point) and used a 56mm lens (eq.), the wick is now visible, which in the first scenario appears physically impossible.

Thanks for that Slobodan, but for your experiment to work correctly as compared to the original image of the boat, you would also need to see the top of the candle at the rear end of the candle - the bit of the candle furthest away from you when you took the shot. The wick in the second shot is just standing proud above the candle and is therefore reflected as expected at the distance you shot it. But even if you took a shot of the candle sat on the mirror from the other end of the room, would you then see the top of the candle in the reflection?

I think that the answer might be, that if the boat was a just a vertical picture of the boat stood vertically in the water, then obviously you would see the whole picture reflected in the water, so perhaps what is happening here, is that the reflection is somehow being created and then viewed on a vertical plane or a series of vertical planes - imagine a series of see-through mirrors all stacked in front of one another and that run all the way up to the sensor on my camera from the edge of the boat, which are again all set at a vertical plane to the horizontal water. Then the reflection you see here, is a sort of composite of all these slices of vertical reflections and as such, could then include the upper part of the boat - could that be it???

Jeremy, yes indeed please have a go at explaining this to me with a drawing if you would be so kind, as I would truly grateful to see what you draw.

I know this is just a bit of fun and the world will not stop spinning if I can't get my head around this, but it would be good to know how this has happened in a way that is easily understandable, so thanks everyone for your ideas and explanations and help, even though I am still struggling to get to grips with this 

Dave

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

See?

Yes you have almost replicated this in the third shot, as we can see some of the upper parts of the object in the reflection of the mirror, so yes I agree the phenomenon can easily be replicated, but how is it possible to see something that is on the top of an object, being reflected in a flat plane surface that lies beneath it.

Thanks for all your help 

Dave

[Ivophoto]

Yes you have almost replicated this in the third shot, as we can see some of the upper parts of the object in the reflection of the mirror, so yes I agree the phenomenon can easily be replicated, but how is it possible to see something that is on the top of an object, being reflected in a flat plane surface that lies beneath it.

Thanks for all your help 

Dave

I think this is the graph Jeremy had in mind

Entry and exit angle is always the same. It is easy to imagine the further you are standing the flatter the reflected plane is.

[Telecaster]

The light from the boat arrives at your eyes and your camera lens via a combination of smoother and rougher reflection surfaces due to motion in the water. The more diffuse light, coming from rougher portions of the lake's surface, gives you the seemingly impossible "view from above" in the reflected image. Atmospheric turbulence can also play a part in such phenomena. Light interacts strongly with "stuff." This is its job…it carries energy from thing to thing, and gets jostled around in the process.

-Dave-

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

I think this is the graph Jeremy had in mind

Entry and exit angle is always the same. It is easy to imagine the further you are standing the flatter the reflected plane is.

But what about when the scene looks like this?

Thanks for your help by the way - Dave

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

The light from the boat arrives at your eyes and your camera lens via a combination of smoother and rougher reflection surfaces due to motion in the water. The more diffuse light, coming from rougher portions of the lake's surface, gives you the seemingly impossible "view from above" in the reflected image. Atmospheric turbulence can also play a part in such phenomena. Light interacts strongly with "stuff." This is its job…it carries energy from thing to thing, and gets jostled around in the process.

-Dave-

Thanks for that Dave, don't know if it helps me understand fully, but certainly a worthy contribution to understanding the problem 

Dave

[Ivophoto]

But what about when the scene looks like this?

Thanks for your help by the way - Dave

Your boat doesn’t look like that.

Your boat looks a bit exaggerated like this

[fdisilvestro]

There is nothing strange in the reflection. The bow of the boat is much higher than the stern, that's why you see it in the reflection.
Turn the boat 180 degree and you will see the difference