Shadows are simple to explain. There’s, uh, light, and then there’s stuff that gets in the way of the light, and then…shadows!
Well, maybe I can’t explain shadows. But we all know how they work. Still, that isn’t going to stop them from getting weird from time to time.
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“The shadow left the snow on the roof untouched.”
It’s always a fun effect when the cool area under a shadow retains its snow and frost, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it play out as dramatically as this.
“Straight ladder has a crooked shadow.”
I can only assume that a side view of that ladder is super crooked, because otherwise I have no idea how a seemingly ramrod-straight ladder could cast a shadow so strange. Maybe the back door of the truck is wavy or something.
“Shadow cast by my lamp looks like a happy spider with a ball.”
I don’t want any gigantic spiders, or shadows of gigantic spiders, in my house. But if it must happen, I guess I’d prefer that they were happily playing with a ball.
“The shadow of my bookshelf looks like a city skyline.”
I love the mellow late afternoon light of this photo, but that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to talk about shadows. I can confirm that this shadow does indeed look like a city’s skyline.
“An actual full rainbow and the shadow of my plane.”
Wait, you can see ‘full’ rainbows that look like circles if you’re high enough up? I had no idea. The perfect shadow of the airplane is a nice bonus in this photo.
“My jeans shadow looks like a face.”
Stuff like this freaks me right out. I know it’s a pair of jeans and I know it’s just random chance that it looks like a face, but still…just look at how uncanny it is.
“The shadow of this decoration piece makes a horror movie villain.”
If you mount a big, spooky-looking cow head on your wall, don’t be surprised if it makes your living room look that much more terrifying in the middle of the night.
“This fuel filler cap’s shadow looks like Batman.”
I think the whole point of Batman is that he shows up, unexpectedly, to do good. Maybe he’s doing it here, in a way — even if it’s just a reminder to pick up that gas cap.
“The shadows formed on this bench are a perfect greyscale.”
I’m sure there’s a simple scientific explanation for this, but I’m not well-versed in the scientific method. I’ll just go ahead and call this one magic, because it sure seems like it.
“The shadow from the bull’s head making it look like it has a chicken’s body.”
A combination of the shape of the wireframe sculpture and the placement of the light fixture makes this take on another look than what was originally intended.
“This shadows from my Axis and Allies game.”
I never got into Axis and Allies because it looked incredibly complicated. This picture isn’t going to change my mind, but I can still appreciate how the tableau looks when placed near a light.
“Changing my friend’s car radio when I noticed this. The shadow looks like an alien language.”
I’d like to see a few more angles of this, because I’m not convinced that it isn’t showing an alien language. Seriously, what are those shapes?
“Around 2pm every sunny day, there’s a 1 shadow on my floor.”
Sometimes the universe just wants to do you a solid and let you know you’re number one. I mean, it’s never happened to me, but maybe someday it will.
“The shadow of this bench looks like pixels in this picture I took.”
Here’s another one where I can’t even begin to explain what’s going on. Why don’t the shadows just end normally? What’s causing the gradient pixel effect?
“This glass casts a spooky shadow.”
I like a glass of water as much as the next guy, but sometimes you just get a bad feeling about something. I would never want to drink out of this glass after seeing its dark side.
“My country is so poor it even has low quality shadows.”
This person must live in a country that’s still running on PlayStation 1, or maybe even Super Nintendo, hardware. Just think of how much better the shadows will look when they upgrade to PS5.
“I found the shadow from my sculpture more interesting than the sculpture.”
It’s hard for us to compare the two since the photographer barely captured the sculpture. But I can agree that the shadow it casts is downright fascinating to look at.
“Shadow and slope makes it look like he’s floating.”
I love these pics. For awhile it’s hard to fathom what your brain is taking in. But then, once you see it for what it really is, you can’t really see the illusion anymore.
“I genuinely thought my car was hovering over the parking lot.”
Here we go with another one of those illusions. Imagine this person’s relief when they walked up to their car to find that it was not, in fact, floating in the air.
“This shadow from two different trees in my parking lot.”
This is a really cool effect. It wouldn’t be half as interesting if the shadow of the full tree wasn’t juxtaposed with the branches of the tree with no leaves.
