Can You Believe this is NOT a Photo Mosaic?

Appearances can be deceiving. Even though the camera supposedly never lies, the same can be said for photography. One intriguing example is the cover artwork for band VLP’s “Terrain” album photographed by Béla Borsodi. What looks like a mosaic of four different photos cleverly tiled together is actually a single photograph, resulting in a sort of visual illusion:

photo not mosaic

Mind-bending single photograph (click for larger size, imgur)

Borsodi devised the innovative idea and painstakingly arranged everyday objects in patterns of shape and color to give the final product the appearance of multiple photos.

Look closely: the perspective is so perfect and the objects acting as straight dividing edges are positioned with such accuracy, that you might never guess that it was a single photo, or get to appreciate all the prep work that went into this fascinating project — that’s why we’ve included the following video for your enjoyment:

(It’s almost hard to believe your eyes as you watch a jumble of random items transform into a precise work of art; you might need to watch it twice to fully absorb the whole process.)

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4 responses to “Can You Believe this is NOT a Photo Mosaic?”

  1. Lois Bryan says:

    very cool … great concept very well executed!!

  2. Jacques says:

    As for the Mosaic though, you have got to respect the patience this person had to set up the shot. Kudos to the person for not being like me, as I would have had a very big hammer there long ago with many a hole in the shot.

  3. Jacques says:

    “Even though the camera supposedly never lies, the same can be said for photography.”

    Not exactly true, the camera doesn’t lie, it shows what you made it show. As for photography, it shows what you wanted to show in the WAY YOU WANTED to show it, emphasis on way you wanted.

    Unfortunately I can not remember the name of the photographer, but what the photo was, was an example to show how you can “lie” with photography in a way. It was a photo of a dead woman, 5 different shots, shot one = portrait, her on upper side water on the lower side, so it looked like a drowning, shot two = portrait, her on lower side building behind her, so it looked liked she had jumped from the building, shot 3 = landscape, her on the left died out fire on the right, so it looked like she died from fire, shot 4 = landscape her on the right dropped weapons or something of the sorts on the left, so it looked like she was assaulted and killed. And shot 5 = the reveal, landscape shot of the entire scene showing where everything is. That is just one example, if I ever find the photos again, or figure how to google ungoogleable things, then I will definitely come back and link the shot.

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