Non-parallel Shadows

[AGN Fuel]

I was looking for examples on non-parallel shadows and came across this beauty in the A16 70mm photos. Beautiful example of how both uneven ground and also the attitude of the objects can cause convergence of the shadows:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/research/apo.../107/17503.jpg

[Mellow]

hah! Hoisted by your own petard! Yove clearly shown there to be multiple light sources, even though there is only one shadow per object.

(joking)

[Pinemarten]

As an amateur photographer, I hope I can explain the convergence.
The picture was taken with what is called a 'fisheye' or super wide angle lens. Usually 14-25mm focal length. It is designed to get a lot of view into one frame.
It is the same as looking at the reflection in a spoon.
Try it, and see if the shadows converge.

[Kaptain K]

Minor nitpick.
Your f/l reference is for 35mm., where 50mm is considered "normal". For the large format Hasselblad, 50mm would be a wide angle lens. #-o

[Alex W.]

Any art student knows that you've got to have non-parallel shadows if you don't want your images to look strange.

[JayUtah]

When I get a chance I'm going to post some instructional drawings from some of my old drawing textbooks that date back to when people actually drew things with pencils and pens and straightedges, and therefore had to actually know about the geometry that governed the appearance of shadows. Not surprisingly they follow the methods of vanishing-point analysis used to analyze shadows. That's because the underlying geometry is physically-based and is (and ought to be) identical in both cases. Conceptual artist Ron Miller (Dune, etc.) has written on this aspect of the moon hoax theory. He, like many others, makes his living knowing about how to create by hand photorealistic 2D representations of a 3D world.

It's easy to look at these arguments and tell who has spatial reasoning skills and who does not. Those who don't can't understand why their arguments are wrong. They simply don't understand what they see in the universe around them.

[jrkeller]

Here are a couple of nice sites related to perspective and drawings.

http://www.sanford-artedventures.com...rspective.html

http://mathforum.org/sum95/math_and/.../perspect.html