The reflection of a landscape in a calm body of water provides one of the more compelling images that the eye and brain can perceive. A still photo of such a scene falls short of the perception, because over several seconds the brain is able to tease out the structure of the moving water and intuit the pattern of the ripples.

An algorithm to simulate the simplified process of reflections in water is used to create the image below, entitled Solutrean Sunset:

(Click to enlarge)

In reality, of course, a large body of water could never be so calm, and the pattern of the ripples could never be so simple. Yet the simplified pattern provides a sort of supernormal sign stimulus that can make the scene seem “realer than real”.

The artificial waves used to make the reflection are formed from a set of eleven overlapping sine waves of varying period and magnitude. An approximation of three-dimensional foreshortening is created by applying an arctangent function to the distance from the viewer.

The resulting map of three-dimensional fluctuations is then encoded in a single image, using the (R,G,B) property of each pixel to hold the parameters for the directional shifts:

This is a test of the result, using a simplified graphic design:

Below are examples of the chromatized reflection process as applied to four different digital images. Two of them are partially based on photographs, while the other two are wholly artificial:

The Jewels of the Sunset	Damask Dawn at Ocracoke
Solutrean Sunset	Roseate Twilight in the Greek Islands