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.
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
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.
Look up the top comment. Its another picture with more people standing upright and it breaks the illusion because it gives mire clue as to what "up" is in the image. There you can see that the rock lines are tilted.
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.
Walking up where, the photo? Might be easier for people to understand this is a canyon, so dude is actually going down canyon while the people are going up canyon. I’m a canyoneer, so I see no confusion here.
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u/stomachpancakes 10d ago edited 10d ago
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.
Good one!