Water in front of M.C. Escher



 One of M.C. Escher’s most famous works: Relativity.
We’ve featured the piece recreated in Lego,
papercrafts, animated gifts, even in billboards,
but this is undoubtedly the first time someone has been able
to show us what the image looks like when shot through a drop of water!

Artist who goes under the nickname of "smsilton"
captured this amazing image
after about two hours of attempts.
All in all, he said that it probably took him about 150 shots to get it right.

If you were wondering what kind of a set-up a person needs to actually achieve something like this, here’s this picture of his Escher-shooting studio. Smsilton used a 60mm macro lens at f/2.8. He shot the image at ISO 640 and 1/250. But figuring out the right settings for the job wasn’t even the hardest part:

The hardest part was focusing. In the set up picture you can see a piece of string above the eye dropper. I would let that hang down off the eye dropper and focus on that, then move it and squeeze the dropper and the shutter at almost the same time. I have like 30ish more pictures with the drop clearly in the shot but the sketch behind it isn’t in focus, this was the clearest one I got.”

Source: Jill Harness from Mighty Optival Illusions