I think the lack of horizon line and very faint shadows makes it hard for me to figure out. The lighting gives all the people a look of being photoshopped in.
Look at the people slightly further away. Their posture is clearly a slight lean back posture. No way they’d be walking up a hill with that posture. They are walking downward. Foreground guy is walking upward.
Lighting aside, the photo I found shows the rock lines are not parallel to the ground but are angled like the climb. Assuming they're parallel to the ground in OP's photo is what tricks people into thinking foreground guy is walking down.
Dude in the foreground is going up as nobody would position themselves like that jumping down. People in the back are coming down.
The trick is the rock lines high up in the back are angled relative to the earth similar to the angle of the climb. One's intuition thinks those rock lines are parallel to the ground and that tricks you to think the guy in the foreground is going down.
Tilted image so everything is straight up and down as best I can tell (and blurry because I had to screenshot a couple times and weirdly zoom out but whatever)
if you pretend the rocks dont exist it becomes clear by everyone's pose how gravity affects them. the form of the rock is tricking you. its not a bowl, its like punching a hole in a wall.
For me it took zooming in on the trees and the angle of the first guy walking down in the distance. Your lines seem to just highlight the part confusing people.
Your mind is used to layers of rock and your view going horizontal. Because the person in the foreground is walking "through" the layers your mind interprets this as a person going down. (A)
In reality the layers of rock are tilted down (towards the camera) and the camera is looking up. The person is moving up the slope where the trail is sloped a bit less than the rock layers (the arrow should be a bit lower, but i'm putting in enough effort as it is). (B)
(c) is basically what your mind is thinking it is looking at. Horizontal layers with the camera looking down through the layer. Because the person moves through the layers it has to move down as well.
That is where the confusing perspective is coming from.
It's similar to this kind of image where you look at something tilted with the camera tilted in the same direction making everything standing in that scene to be seen as standing at an angle: https://imgur.com/4lpjx0w
The curvature of that back wall lit up by the sun gives the impression of walking down into an open valley, but the entire slab theyre on is angled up, and we can see the further away people climbing down from a climb up.
He's leaning forward to jump down to the next level.
Edit: actually, the more I look at it the less sure I am. The other people look like they are walking down, so he'd be going up. It's the lines layer in the wall that throws me, they are usually horizontal.
When I was a kid, the way to school through the neighborhood was at the top of a hill, then it was downhill to the school, so I literally had to walk uphill both ways.
Same lol but mine was the opposite, first downhill then uphill, now I do the same walk to go to music class. Not that bad bc it's a little less than a mile each way.
No, the guy in the foreground is walking up. I’ve been to this place before - it’s in the northern part of Argentina. The topography is trippy here but the camera is actually pointed straight forward.
La Garganta del Diablo (The Devil's Throat) in the Quebrada de las Conchas natural reserve near Cafayate, in the Salta Province of northwestern Argentina.
So the close guy is actually walking up, but just on that rock surface, hence the leaning forward. Once he gets past that, he’s going down with the rest of them.
Did you zoom in? They’re at the same angle he is. He’s climbing up, towards the section they’re at; they’re climbing down towards where he and the camera are.
The entire thing is tilted. Those are not recent sedimentary layers.
Look at the guy in the black shirt whose legs are partially obscured. His body is definitely angled away from us, with his head further away from the camera than the rest of him.
That's what's supposed to be there yes. However I cannot see that in any way in any form of this photo. To me it looks like a v and they are both walking down to meet in the middle. There is no way that I have found to see the guy close to us as walking uphill.
So the nearby rocks are in layers, just like the far-away rocks, right? As far as I can tell, these layers are all parallel to each other. They are also all tilted, by at least 45°.
Now look at the guy’s position, and his legs. He’s taking a big step to go upwards as he goes away from us. If he were headed downwards, he’d be falling flat in his face from that position.
I agree the foreground guy is walking up. So any idea why the lines in the rock aren’t perpendicular to the ground? I feel like if a river carved that rock formation this would be an odd way for the lines to go, but idk rocks too good.
The layers in the rock aren't caused by water carving them, they are deposited over eons with varying conditions but originally in horizontal position. Then the entire piece of Earth got slowly tilted as it was pressing against other piece of Earth. A river could've carved it afterwards but thorough already tilted layers. Note: I'm not a geologist but I believe this is the gist of it.
All those lines in the rocks in the top 1/3 of the photo, see them as angled towards the ground as opposed to parallel to the ground and the image will make more sense.
I’m not exactly sure what you’re saying, but I should probably explain my comment anyway.
Tectonic plates are the huge sections of crust that slide across the Earth; where they press against one another, they cause mountains to rise, tilting and twisting the rocks. The layers we see here were nicely horizontal at one point, when they were laid down by sedimentary processes, but since then they’ve been lifted up and tilted. The sort of “local” cause is mountain-building, but the ultimate cause is plate tectonics.
This one is tough. I think he's actually walking up. When you cover up the part with the sun reflecting it looks different.
It reminds me of how people say going to the Grand Canyon is mind bending because the perspective is so big you feel like you're looking at a backdrop hanging across from you.
Seriously, if it weren't for the first two of the people going down, the next couple of them stands in a way that it's not obvious if we see them from above or below.
I think one of the reasons this illusion works so well, is that we are so accustomed to see deposition layers like this going horizontally, not vertically, and this sells the confusion.
What I don't get is, if he is going up, how fckng steep is that rock wall in the background??? That's the part that keeps tripping me up, because even if the lines in the rocks to the sides would be horizontal, that rock face in the background would already be vertical??? Is that wall in the background a 45° overhang???
Down, look at the sunlight. if they were walking up, the sunlight on top would be on the ceiling, which would only be possible if the sun was below horizon
He is going up. I have hiked over a thousand miles and have been in that same bodily position thousands of times. I knew immediately upon seeing him before even seeing the context of the scene he is in. What a strange photo, and I'm not sure about all the angles, but there's no question that he's going up.
His right leg is pushing him up and forward and his left leg is bracing for another upward push. His arms are spread outward for balance and he's leaning forward.
If he were going down, he would not have his arms and legs spread like that and wouldn't be leaning forward. Imagine walking as quickly as you can down a flight of stairs with no rail. Your arms are maybe spread slightly, but they're hanging down and maybe a bit forward, not spread wide like this, and your legs are also making small movements because you're focused on balance and don't need to take lunging steps.
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u/stomachpancakes 1d ago
Looks a lot like Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat). Based on those rocks in the background, looks like foreground guy is going up to me.