If you’ve never heard of trick photography techniques before or have always thought that real photography couldn’t have anything to do with trick photos, think again. I was at a photography show the other day and there were a bunch of photographers who had their photos displayed. These are people who are crazy good at what they do. Ok, maybe I don’t appreciate their stuff as much as those who are more educated about and into modern art, but they clearly know what they’re doing with a camera.

Anyway, that was about the last place I expected to find any kind of trick photography. There were a lot of landscapes, and some awesome nature photography, and some cool fashion stuff. I’m kicking myself for not taking down more names, but I found one really cool picture that made me stop and say, “Whoa, how in the world did they do that?”.

And not in the movie poster kind of way. This was more subtle. In case you're wondering what i'm talking about it's the only photo you can see in this article.

Pretty cool, huh?

The thing about it is it’s like a blend of a modern art photo and a trick photo. And to me that means that the whole trick photography is starting to go a little more mainstream. Like it’s a legitimate way to take a photograph.

Of course, as you can tell from the picture, the attention to detail needs to be second to none. Look at the shadows. See how there are two light sources, one giving a nice soft shadow on the back wall and then a sharper one created by a lamp coming from the right? The shadows help to create wonderful depth in the photograph, and add a ton of believability to the image.

It really messes with your mind because if that girl were really stuck to the wall, her hair would be falling down, unless of course it’s put up in a way that it wouldn’t? Look at the girl (it’s the same girl of course, which is another clever little trick) on the right. She is standing and her hair isn’t falling down at all, which again increases the depth of the illusion with that girl stuck to the wall.

And how about the fact that she’s been placed inside a picture frame? What’s cool about that is that the shadow has to cross over the frame. Now if that’s done using photoshop it’s been done really well and that’s a great example of trick photography with photoshop. If not, it’s just a really cool detail that’s been added to the picture.

So if you’re interested in trick photography, I hope this gives you some inspiration and lets you know that trick photography techniques can be used in whatever kind of photography you’re in to.