What photographers can learn from a net bag of oranges
Saturday 28 September 2024, 14:28 by Elvira Smit | 3,599 views | 2 commentsThis article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.
I had never thought about the net bag around oranges until this week. The bag does not just have any colour, but a colour that makes the oranges look more appealing. I had no idea.
Someone has thought about everything. Including the net bag around oranges. That bag quietly creates the Munker-White illusion:
What is that?
Take a look at the balls below:
.png "Munker-White illusion (1)")
They look like orange, green and blue balls. But no, they are all exactly the same colour.
If you do not believe that, take a look at the animation below:
The illusion explained
With the Munker-White illusion, identical colours are perceived differently as a result of the surrounding colours. Depending on the colour of the overlapping stripes, the balls therefore appear lighter or darker. The blue stripes over the (apparently) blue balls make me think that the entire ball is blue.
This is because our brains do not just look at the colour of an object, but also at the colours around it to determine the colour of the object.
Back to the oranges. The red netting makes the orange colour stand out. Take a look at the image below: on the left you can see the colour orange without red stripes over it, as with a net bag. On the right you can see the same colour orange with a "net" over it. It looks like a much deeper orange. But both oranges are exactly the same.
As a photographer, you can of course also make use of the Munker-White illusion. For example, in product photography, by placing products against contrasting backgrounds or surrounding them with coloured elements. Fun to experiment with!
About the author
Ik heb een eigen fotografieblog, Kronkeling. Daar schrijf ik om de week twee artikelen. Over hoe je je blik kunt scherpen, je creativiteit kunt aanwakkeren, en over fotografen die mij inspireren. Geen technische zaken, wél over hoe je leert kijken. En dat blijkt nog een hele klus. Een mooi startpunt zijn de Kronkeltips, die vind je hier.
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2 comments
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Marloes van Slobbe wrote on Tuesday 1 October 2024 at 13:05 | replyVery interesting article. I love optical illusions and I'd love to experiment with this one in my photography. Thanks, Elvira!
Translated from Dutch. -
Elvira Smit
wrote on Wednesday 2 October 2024 at 15:38
| reply
@Marloes: that's nice to hear, good luck with your experiments!
Translated from Dutch.
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