44 awesome forced perspective-shots every traveler needs in their photo albums

Let’s face it, you’ve seen a million photos of people holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and for good reason. They’re super easy to set up, you get a kitschy-yet-fun souvenir out of it, it only costs a minute of time and minor frustration when dad can’t quite get the right angle, and it looks like the tower’s crashing into your face.

These forced-perspective shots, playing with our perceptual systems by warping the size and depth cues in the composition (one extreme example), have become a staple in the traveler’s photo album. Whether you’re looking for ideas to create some of your own, or just killing time at work, check out these shots from around the world…starting with some classics.

SALAR DE UYUNI

The largest salt flat in the world, Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni has become probably the best known place to capture some seriously crazy forced-perspective shots. There’s just too little visual contextual info for our perceptual systems to make sense of what we’re seeing against that background of flat white. As such, it deserves a section all its own. Here are 9 shots from the Salar.

OTHER PLACES

Of course, you don’t need a vast monochrome expanse to set up some sweet forced-perspective shots — the options are really limitless. Here are 30 more, captured around the world.

UNKNOWN LOCATIONS

We couldn’t determine the locations of these final 5 shots, but definitely wanted to include them anyway.