#19. Your Artsy Photographer Friend Finally Learned Photoshop
This looks like somebody decided to toy with mixing color with grayscale, maybe as an homage to the "girl in the red coat" from Schindler's List.
But it's actually an undoctored photo taken in the aftermath of a volcano eruption in Indonesia. When the eruption left a thin layer of ash over the landscape, the flower was still a bud. After the dust had settled, it bloomed to become a vivid splash of red in the ashy gray landscape. The result is a striking photo with an inspirational message for the ages: Sometimes success means being born at the right time.
#18. "I Wanted a House That Reflects What's in My Soul"
via ThisIsColossal.com"I see a red door and I want it painted black ... then sometimes I go a little overboard."
This looks like somebody selected this house with the Magic Wand tool in Photoshop, then slid the brightness down to zero. That, or it's the house every 13-year-old goth kid swears he's going to live in when he grows up. But it's actually a very real home in Germany, or at least it was.
And, while we wish we could tell you that Glenn Danzig lives there, in reality it was painted like this as a farewell prior to demolition. Or maybe the house knew the demolition crew was going to show up at night and went into stealth mode.
#17. No, This Isn't Man-Made
At a glance, you'd say there are two options for this "man in the mountain" photo: It's either a very quick and simple Photoshop job or a very laborious and complex art project that spent months turning the mountainside into an image of a goateed giant who's about to burglarize the shit out of this town.
But it's neither -- it's a completely natural and coincidental formation on a mountainside near Alesund, Norway. Before you call bullshit, here's what it looks like up close, as seen in this photo by climber Arnt Flatmo:
The locals call the man in the mountainside "Sulamannen" (hint: The mountain itself is located in the town of Sula), and he only appears when it gets just the right amount of snow. The folklore goes that each winter, like magic, this man in the sock hat and goatee appears and, once everyone is asleep, swoops down and steals your television to sell it for meth money.
#16. Oh God, Please Tell Us He Cropped in That Background
Nothing about this looks real, for about a dozen different reasons. Obviously no human would suspend himself by his fingertips at what looks like 2,000 feet off the ground. And in general the cityscape below him looks like a bad CGI effect. For all the realism this guy achieved, he might as well have cropped himself into a photo of outer space.
But if you're scared of heights, get ready for your palms to start sweating: This is an undoctored photo of a real stunt, done with no safety harness, performed by a real idiot. He is a Ukrainian man who goes by the name Mustang Wanted, and if you want to see him taunt death in video form, have at it:
He doesn't reveal anything else about his identity or his motivation, but from the information available to us, we're going to assume he's trying to save up to buy a Mustang.
#15. Perhaps You Would Like to Upgrade to Our New Fourth-Dimensional Siding
This looks like a clever photo project blending a before and an after view of a house in the desert by alternating the views with each board. Or something. But by now you know that this is exactly what you would see if you were standing in front of the house -- it just took some strategically placed mirrors.
It wouldn't work if the desert wasn't so uniform that the reflection becomes indistinguishable from the landscape on the other side of the house, giving the illusion that you're looking straight through it. The house was part of an art installation by artist Phillip K. Smith III, and we're not sure how the photos were taken without capturing the photographer in the shot -- it probably has something to do with vampirism. Oh, and if you think the thing looks trippy during the day, it coulddouble as a goddamned rave club at night.
#14. From the LEGO School of Architecture
"So it's not a Photoshop, it's just a really shitty model of a housing development?" Nope, there's real, tiny people in them there houses. That is, depressingly, a real housing complex on the outskirts of Mexico City.
We can't give you an angle that doesn't make it look like a little LEGO village built by the world's most unimaginative child. The houses even come in gender-specific colors, the orange for boys and a lovely pink for the girls, complete with parking space for the LEGO Barbie dream car. In the wider view, you can even see primer-gray models in the background, presumably waiting to be painted:
#13. Look Closely, You'll See a Face
OK, if that's not Photoshop, then it's some stupid stuffed animal, right? That's not, you know, some kind of living being ...
It sure is. That there is an actual Angora rabbit, and its fur is the result of carefully breeding only the fluffiest bunnies with each other over thousands of generations. This means that breeders have to take a male that looks exactly like that and a female that is exactly that fluffy, or fluffier, and make them mate.
#12. "Yeah, Man, You Can Really Feel the Bass"
We've got to admit, but for the first time ever, we were more focused on the rest of the picture, rather than the fact that the dude's balls are showing. What looks like a reflection in a fun house mirror is in fact a statue created using a 3D printer and a modified 3D scan of artist Richard Dupont's own body (or he was trying to create an exact replica and the printer fucked up).
We have to give him credit; a lot of artists couldn't have resisted the impulse to give themselves a little upgrade below the belt. Although we guess it's possible he did.
#11. It's a Stripper's Shoulder Tattoo Come to Life
We're shocked there isn't a unicorn loping by in the background of this photo of a man gently casting a magic spell to the wonderment of his dolphin friend. Are there real people whose actual lives just ... look like this? All the time? Is that seaweed hiding a singing crab perched on his shoulder?
This photo was a finalist in a CBS sports photography competition taken by George Karbus. If you look close enough, it's easy to spot that the aquatic wizard's magic missile is actually just a well-placed jellyfish. Which, incidentally, makes the photo about 1 percent less weird. Is he, like, feeding it or something? Does he have jellyfish food on his finger? Do jellyfish allow you to just poke them like that? And are passing dolphins always that amused by it?
#10. "GAAAAHHH MY ARM!"
What looks like a cruel booby trap intended to rip the tendons out of the elbows of unsuspecting tourists is actually just a perspective trick created by Jerry Andrus (that's not him in the photo), the world's king of creating apparently impossible objects. It's next to impossible to explain how it works in text (although if you stare at it long enough, you may eventually figure it out -- you're looking at the hollow back of the sculpture), so your best bet is to watch it in motion:
What's great about that video is that, when the illusion is viewed from the front, it still looks impossible when you pass something through it even in motion. Hell, even after you know how it works, the moment he turns it around, your brain just freezes up again. See, this is the kind of shit that used to get people put on trial for witchcraft.
#9. Sharkception
This looks like one of those bullshit fake photos you'd expect to see on Facebook and then debunked on Snopes a month later. But this "food chain in action" shot is in fact real -- it's a shark eating a dogfish eating some bait.
Basically, researchers use bait to attract the sharks that they previously tagged, and in this case a quick-witted dogfish decided to go for the bait before the shark could get there. Well, the joke's on him. And if these researchers didn't immediately go try to find a whale to cram this all into, we're not sure what we're paying them for.
#8. Rooftop Island
If that looks like a secluded island villa glued on top of a huge apartment building, well, that's exactly what it is. Why would such a thing exist? Because sometimes rich people are crazy, too.
The villa is the work of a wealthy Chinese doctor who spent six years constructing it on top of an apartment building in Beijing. The two-story-tall construction is a combination of fake rocks and real trees and dirt. It cost him $2.4 million and was constructed noisily above a building where hundreds of other people live.
So how do you get permission to build such a crazy thing, considering the building below it clearly wasn't designed for it? You don't! You just start building that shit. Sure enough, as soon as he got it finished, authorities told the man to tear it down. We've got a feeling this shit is going to end in an armed standoff.
#7. There Is No Water in This Picture
This looks like a simple fish tank or scuba photo cropped onto a black background. But there is no water, or seaweed, or any other aquatic life involved here: It's just a particularly cool opal gemstone.
The colors are called inclusions, other substances that found their way inside the molten material as the gemstone formed. But even seeing it in somebody's hand doesn't diminish the illusion that they've managed to imprison a piece of the ocean floor in some kind of magical crystal.
The photos are for an auction site where it was listed for $5,400, but the site says the sale was suspended for reasons we assume involve seller wizardry.
#6. An Extreme Close-Up of Paint on Canvas? Maybe Icing Spread on a Sheet Cake?
Maybe it's one of those Magic Eye 3D pictures that were so popular in the '90s? Don't bother guessing -- you could probably stare at this all day and never deduce that what you're seeing is a satellite image of the Namib Desert, the red sands meeting the Tsauchab River.
And now let us blow your minds again: There is no water in this photo. At the bottom is a dry riverbed. The color comes from white salt deposits and vegetation (if you lean in real close, you'll see the highway that cuts down through the middle of it and a side road that splits off a little more than halfway through). Here's another image that makes it look exactly as strange as the last one:
Kari/European Space AgencyIf you look closely you can see a tiny Arnold Schwarzenegger struggling to breathe.
#5. Oh Crap! Ghost Tsunami!
This water vapor tidal wave looks like the world's most low-key natural disaster, but from the ground it probably looks like nothing other than a bit of fog. This photo was snapped by a helicopter tour company in Florida, and it's a sight you can catch on rare occasions when the air is just the right temperature and humidity. You have those hotels to thank for it -- the air currents are lifted by the buildings, which causes the air to cool and the pressure to increase. That makes the water vapor condense, and suddenly you have yourself a 50-story wall of mist crashing gently over absurdly expensive oceanfront property.
It's times like this when you appreciate how freaky the world would look if we could actually see the air at all times. It probably gets up to all kinds of cool shit like this when we're not paying attention.
#4. "Honey, We're Only Going to Be Here a Week!"
Kommersant/Getty/Getty Images"I can fit this in the overhead. I do it all the time!"
We'll let you stop and count the things that don't make sense about this photo, which would be strange enough if Saint Basil's Cathedral wasn't sitting there in the background.
The object blotting out the Moscow skyline is just what it looks like -- a massive Louis Vuitton suitcase. The huge replica luggage housed a pavilion advertising all sorts of fancy goods for the wealthy traveler. The hubris of placing such a symbol of Western consumerism next to the tomb of a famed communist didn't go unnoticed, and outrage forced them to take it down. Hey, scream all you want, guys, but this is your punishment for losing the Cold War. Get rid of it, and we'll just replace it with a huge replica of a tiny purse with a dog in it.
#3. A Polka-Dot Dress? A Row of White-Capped Bottles?
This is another one that messes with your eyes the longer you stare at it. But if your gaze drifts down near the bottom, you can make out what you're seeing: a bunch of dudes in white hats. Specifically, French police officers in their dress uniforms, standing at attention during their graduation ceremony.
Did you find the guy in the upper right quadrant leaning over, presumably peering around the line to see up to the front to try to figure out how much longer it will be until it's his turn to get his goddamned diploma?
#2. It's the Furriest Bridge in America
Is it just us, or does it look like somebody managed to mate this lighthouse with one of those fluffy bunnies from earlier? We would Photoshop in an image of one of those rabbits humping a lighthouse, but inserting a doctored photo would go against the spirit of the article. Feel free to make your own.
A closer look at this one reveals the white stuff to be ice, the wind turning the icicles into twisted tentacles as they froze. That lighthouse is on the shores of Lake Michigan, and no, we have no goddamned idea how you're supposed to get into that door up there.
#1. It's Blue Lava
Seriously, we don't even know what to say. Look at it. That is some hostile alien landscape shit right there. Imagine seeing that pool of glowing wizard fire rolling down toward your village. It'd immediately be followed by your very own eruption of brown lava into your pants.
That is, in fact, not a volcano, but a sulfur mine, and blue flames are what you get when the sulfur combusts.
Olivier GrunewaldAnd you don't run for cover, of course. You stare, a torch in one hand, giant testicles in the other.
The sulfur isn't burning when it comes out of the ground -- the surreal blue fires erupt when miners "accidentally" ignite it with their torches. We put "accidentally" in sarcasm quotes there because you just know they're lighting that shit all the time, just to watch it burn (we're thinking seeing this is literally the only perk of working in a sulfur mine). By the way, try to imagine being the first guy to accidentally drop his torch in there, only to see that happen as a result.
Source - HuffNews
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