{"id":130451,"date":"2023-02-20T06:07:20","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T13:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=130451"},"modified":"2023-02-20T11:16:57","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T18:16:57","slug":"reflections-theyre-often-not-what-theyre-presumed-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/20\/reflections-theyre-often-not-what-theyre-presumed-to-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections – They’re Often Not What They’re Presumed To Be"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally I rerun a favorite older blog post. Today’s post is a ‘twofer’, containing portions of two different posts originally published in 2015 and 2019. For this version I’ve rewritten much of the text, tweaked the formatting and used a new title.<\/em><\/p>\n

Many folks believe that when there’s a reflection of a photo subject on the surface of undisturbed water, that reflection is an exact upside-down replica of the way we see the subject itself. Not so. It never is. It can’t be.<\/p>\n

In nature photography a reflection typically occurs when light bounces off of an object (a bird for example), strikes the water’s surface and then travels to our eyes. What we see in the reflection is slightly different from what we see in the bird because the angle of light from the reflection to our eyes doesn’t travel the same pathway as that of the light that came directly from the bird to our eyes.<\/p>\n

It’s difficult to explain with just words, so I’ll use two of my photos taken at Bear River MBR to demonstrate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-crowned<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

At first glance it may appear that the reflection in this photo of an immature Black-crowned Night Heron is an exact upside-down replica of the actual bird and its background. It isn’t. That fact is most easily realized when we notice that there’s a small rock immediately above the head of the heron that is nowhere to be seen in the reflection.<\/p>\n

Notice that we also see more of the underside plumage of the\u00a0heron between the legs and tail in the reflection than we do in the bird itself. There are other more subtle differences too.<\/p>\n

Think of it this way – what we’re actually seeing in the reflection is what we would see if our eyeballs were floating somewhere on the surface of the water where the reflection is and looking up at the bird. From that vantage point the rock would not be seen above the head of the bird and we could see more ventral plumage.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"snowy\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/p>\n

Here’s another example that involves both the bird and the background but I’ll focus on the bird. Notice that in the reflection we see about twice as much of the Snowy Egret’s bill than we do in the bird itself. That’s because the bird is reflected from below (where our imaginary eyeballs are) and at that angle we could see further up into the nooks and crannies of the plumage where the tip of the bill is.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We tend to make assumptions about reflections that aren’t necessarily true, a tendency that some artists deliberately take advantage of in their paintings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photo in public domain<\/em><\/p>\n

This is Vel\u00e1zquez’s Rokeby Venus. In the painting we see the goddess Venus in a sensual pose, lying on a bed and looking into a mirror held by the Roman god of physical love, her son Cupid. There are several other famous paintings similar to this one with Cupid holding a mirror and Venus appearing to look at her own reflection in the mirror.<\/p>\n

But as painted, that would be impossible.<\/p>\n

Since we the viewers, and presumably Vel\u00e1zquez himself, can see the reflection of Venus’s face in the mirror, it would be impossible for Venus to also see her face in the mirror at the same time. Two viewers in different locations cannot see the same reflection in the same mirror at the same time.<\/em><\/p>\n

Vel\u00e1zquez of course was perfectly aware of that fact. It’s an artist’s ‘trick’, that has been used often enough by various artists to earn its own name. In art it’s called the “Venus Effect<\/a><\/span><\/span>“.<\/p>\n

In the hard sciences and in psychology it’s called “na\u00efve physics<\/a><\/span><\/span>” – <\/em>a line of research that focuses on the tendency of most people to hold beliefs that are inconsistent with observable phenomena.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because… “naive physics”. (3 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[338,5,6,334,1126,375],"tags":[6745,49,716,6746,6747,6748,6749,3407,6744,287,4830,4831,6743],"class_list":["post-130451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-bird-oddities","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-black-crowned-night-herons","category-snowy-egrets","tag-artists-trick","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-black-crowned-night-heron","tag-cupid","tag-goddess-venus","tag-mirror-reflection","tag-naive-physics","tag-painting","tag-physics-of-reflections","tag-snowy-egret","tag-velazquezs-rokeby-venus","tag-venus-effect","tag-what-is-a-reflection"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/snowy-egret-3031b-ron-dudley-Recovered.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-xW3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130451"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130513,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130451\/revisions\/130513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}