Black Shapes

black shapes llusion gallery

Unlike the “LIAR” illusion, where I just gave away what you were supposed to be looking for in the title of the page,  I’m not going to do that here. Of course, if you keep reading this without looking at the illusion above, it’s going to be a dead giveaway, so stop reading and start staring at the picture above to figure out exactly what this is a picture of!

This is another classic example in the history of optical illusions. Usually, our eyes are used to reading black text on a white background, so at first when you look at these shapes above you see just that – shapes. But, after you look for a little longer you’ll see that the white space actually spells a word – LIFT.

Kevin emailed us to tell us this, because he thought everyone should know about it: Thanks Kevin!

“while looking at the illusion with lift in white, I noticed after looking at it for another moment it starts to move, you didn’t mention that in the caption and thought I would say something to you about it — Kevin”

We should add that the most likely reason for this is because black and white can create an strong afterimage, and unless you were staring at the absolute center, your eyes will tend to move around and then it’s slightly off center. The exact same thing happens if you stare at a light bulb for a few seconds. Go ahead, try it, and release your inner child!