Simple Scene, Sensational Shot

3Techniques that Transform

Refraction

Every time you take a picture, you are manipulating refraction. This is the effect that occurs when light moves from one material to another at an angle. The shape of your camera’s lens is designed carefully, usually in order to create a faithful impression of what you’re looking at with your own eyes. Without going too deeply into the physics, at the boundary between one medium (for instance, the air) and another (glass of water), a light wave changes direction, and when you can see both mediums at once, light appears to “bend.”

As a photographer, you can make use of this by looking out for objects ...