Helderberg International School – Virtual Intersek 2021
We are extremely excited that our participants fared so well in the Artistic/Optical Illusion Photography contest – with Jessica Bailey in Year 10, winning this event and Connor Brooker in Year 9, winning his age group – Category 2, and Antony Chen in Year 6, coming in second in his age group – Category 1, for the Mathematical Photography contests at Intersek 2021 this year. There were some beautiful images submitted by the various contestants worldwide. Competing at Intersek was a first for us and a thoroughly enjoyable experience.
Antony documents the Mathematics used in his photograph:
I placed the shell down on the surface and then hung the slinky over the shell. I positioned the camera on top of the slinky looking down onto the shell. This created a spiral effect.
A spiral is a three-dimensional curve. The shell is a golden spiral which is a spiral that gets wider in a ratio called the golden ratio. The slinky is a space curve spiraling around a Helix (a coil). Looking down into the slinky I captured concentric circles. Concentric circles are circles that have a common center. The space between the concentric circles is called an annulus.
Device used: Nikon B700 camera
Jessica, in Year 10 documents her Journey:
When I was informed about the artistic optical illusion competition, and was told that it had to involve a piece of our heritage, my mind immediately thought of Table Mountain, because it is one of the most well-known touristic/heritage sights in the country.
I first envisioned a scene of my two models, being my close friends Robyn Pearse and Connor Payze, sitting together on dining chairs on the beach, eating dinner on table mountain. I sketched out my idea, and thought of things I could put on the “table”, and ways on how I could position them. I decided to build a frame that would be portable and hang the items from the top beam using fishing lines, so it would create the illusion that the items were actually placed on the “table”. Because of limited space, I ended up going with a simple tea, incorporating some national specialties such as koeksisters on the saucers and a protea centred in the middle of the “table”. Before we made the final plans, my dad and I did a test run at home with the frame, and used a plate as our test item, and our property gate as our “table”, and it worked out perfectly!
In the editing process I removed the fishing lines and moved the items around a little bit, as well as added a shadow underneath each item to ensure the illusion was fully created.
I was very pleased with the outcome, and was extremely honoured to have been nominated and even won! I am also very grateful for the help of my dad, who helped me build and set up the frame, ensure all the items were secure, and took the time out of his schedule to drive us to our location and back. As well as very grateful for my lovely models for being so patient, taking the time out of their day to help me out and for doing so well with the modeling!
Connor outlines the Mathematics used in his winning photograph:
I used a kaleidoscope with a marble at the end and faced it towards the sun. A kaleidoscope is an instrument with optical properties forming a reflection of light using mirrors (in this case 3 mirrors in the shape of an equilateral triangle). This has created a tessellation of equilateral triangles and thereby creating 6-sided hexagons. These shapes create patterns and radial symmetry using transformations such as reflections, rotations and translations.Device used: Huawei P30 Pro
