image

Charles Platt

Flip Your Face

See yourself as others see you with a true mirror.

By Charles Platt

MOST PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT A MIRROR rotates your image from left to right, but this is not really correct. To clarify this confusing issue, I’ve sketched the story of an intrepid investigator named Ray, who reflects on it in some depth (Figure A). Ray happens to have a right ear that’s bigger than his left, which makes it easy to see whether his image has been flipped. The lesson from this story is that when a photograph is turned around from the position in which it was taken, the image turns with it. Therefore, whether it looks as if your face is flipped ...

Get Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 31 now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.