How can I create a photo that splits viewers into two strong color interpretations, like the dress image?
Asked 3/1/2015
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2 answers
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I’m interested in reproducing the kind of ambiguous color perception seen in the famous dress photo, but with a different subject. I’m not looking for a simple color cast or a standard optical illusion where most people are fooled in the same way. I want to know whether there’s a reliable way to photograph a scene so that different viewers strongly and immediately settle on one of two conflicting color interpretations.
Is there a photographic method for creating that kind of binary response? If so, what elements are essential: subject choice, lighting ambiguity, exposure, white balance, image quality, or prior expectations about the subject’s colors?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
2 Answers
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As Count Iblis explained, people likely have a pretty good idea of how that dress should look. The image is ambiguous, but each option cancels the other out - the dress can't be kinda both.
Similar to the picture above, where it is really hard to make the dancer switch direction - but it is possible.
People probably are even less able to switch "direction" when it comes to color perception. I simply can't see a white and gold dress unless you brighten the image. Then, still, I can only imagine what it actually feels like.
You probably would need to find something that some people already tend to believe is one way, while others believe the opposite. Then you'd have to make it so ambiguous, that every interpretation is possible.
The tricky part is to "bake in" that ambiguity. Even when brigthening the dress, the color ratio of the dress to the background stays the same, still letting me interpret the image as a blue, black dress.
The only real chance you'd have to recreate this effect on another subject is to choose something already polarising and then testing out and refining its ambiguous presentation.
Originally by user30073. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user30073
11y ago
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There doesn’t appear to be a simple, reliable recipe from the discussion. The key idea is that the effect depends on two things happening at once:
- The image must be genuinely ambiguous in its lighting/color cues, so multiple interpretations are plausible.
- The subject should invite strong prior assumptions about what its colors “ought” to be.
The dress worked because viewers could plausibly discount the illumination in opposite ways, and the two color readings effectively cancel each other out — people don’t experience it as “somewhere in between.”
So, to try to recreate it, choose a familiar subject with expected colors, then photograph it under deliberately ambiguous lighting so the scene can be interpreted in two different ways. The hard part is “baking in” that ambiguity convincingly; that’s why this is difficult to reproduce on demand.
In short: you’re not looking for a universal camera setup so much as a combination of ambiguous illumination plus a subject with strong, conflicting viewer expectations. Without both, you’ll usually get either a normal color cast or a conventional illusion, not the same polarized response.
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