The incredible photos showing people matching perfectly with their surroundings

Mind-boggling knitwear

Joseph Ford (SWNS)

A man has taken photos of people matching perfectly with their surroundings… and the results are incredible.

Joseph Ford is a 39-year-old professional photographer from Brighton.

He has a particular fixation with the way in which objects can sometimes blend into one another, which is why he began his “knitted camouflage” series four years ago.

Joseph Ford (SWNS)

His colleague, Nina Dodd, plays an important role in the process, knitting the clothing that’s featured in the photographs.

Knitting one piece of the custom clothing can take Dodd up to 40 hours in total.

Taking the photographs is also a lengthy process.

Ford will sometimes take half a day to shoot in order to ensure that the clothes blend in with the backgrounds as accurately as possible.

Joseph Ford (SWNS)

“The photography is quite time-consuming, but it’s all broken down into little chunks,” he says.

“Most of the locations are places I’ve come across while wandering around cities, and the models are also people I’ve spotted on the street and asked to pose.

“Then the actual pictures have taken about half a day each - there’s a lot of adjusting the position of the model and of the clothes to make sure that the blend works as well as possible.”

Joseph Ford (SWNS)

As you can see, every slight adjustment is well worth it for the extraordinary, illusionary results.

Ford and Dodd work extremely well collaboratively, taking inspiration from one another for the compositions of the photographs.

“Nina loves buses and knitting so we decided to shoot a picture of a man knitting on a bus,” he said.

“I love a challenge of finding graphic locations, picking models who will fit well into them and then working with Nina’s knitting skills to blend them as seamlessly as possible.

Joseph Ford (SWNS)

“My favourite camouflage is the redheaded guy with the blue tiled trousers and white tiled top.”

For Ford, exercising is a very therapeutic way of clearing his head to make room for new ideas.

“I get my inspiration from sports - climbing, running, swimming,” he says.

“Concentrating on exercise clears my mind of everything else and gets me into a head space where I can start to think of new concepts."