The World Through a Glass Ball

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

It was on the beach that I first saw someone photographing a glass ball on a beach post. Very curious, I walked over and asked if I could take a photo of it too.

Go ahead, said the friendly photographer. I pointed my lens and discovered that the world in the ball was literally upside down, creating a truly fantastic spectacle.

There is a physical explanation for why you see the image mirrored in a ball like this. But what mainly sparked my interest was what else I could photograph with it besides beach posts.

A glass ball is actually a kind of inverted fisheye lens, allowing you to capture a wide view of up to 180 degrees. So you can actually capture much more than you can see with your eyes.

I didn't have to think about it for long and bought one myself with a diameter of 8 centimetres (for around 30 euros, including a stand). Its weight is roughly the same as that of a lens.

Bigger may be more beautiful, but it is also much heavier. The best thing about the ball is that it gives you a different view of the world. A kind of miniature world, as if in a bubble.

Photographing with different lenses also gives you variations in your images. Macro, 50mm or wide-angle each produces a different effect, although I think 50 to 100mm gives the most beautiful perspective.

It is important to ask yourself exactly what you want to be in focus. You can do this by focusing manually from a tripod or handheld. Playing with depth of field (aperture) is another option.

Examples I find particularly fun include taking selfies, allowing you to create a very unusual view of yourself. Placing the ball in water, for example in the sea surf, near beautiful shells or leaves.

Architecture is also great to photograph through a ball! The last thing I did, and what I really loved, was photographing graffiti.

Another very surprising way is to place the ball in front of your computer screen with a nice image in the background. It may be cheating a little, but the effect makes up for everything! Just give it a try.

I retouched the stand out of this photo so that it looks as if the ball is floating in space. I did this by flipping a virtual copy in Lightroom, opening both photos as layers in Photoshop, aligning them properly and then carefully removing the stand.

You can choose to rotate the final photo 180 degrees, making the image in the ball reflect reality, while the surroundings will mislead the viewer. If you use a pattern as the background, it doesn't matter. Just try it out and see what appeals to you.

You can get transparent balls, but also coloured ones with bubbles. Lighting these with a flash, for example, can also produce great results.

Perhaps you also have some fun photo ideas for a glass ball and would like to share them with us below!

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