The World's Most Inspirational Iceberg Is a Fake

http://nautil.us/blog/the-worlds-most-inspirational-iceberg-is-a-fake

by signaler • 11 years ago

82 26 11 years ago

nautil.us

bcraven• 11 years ago

Here's a video with the photographer about the image:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NeyTEO_JP0

GBond• 11 years ago

We’re still making sales. It’s approaching $1 million. I get about 40 percent of that. It put my kids through college.

Wow. Can a stock image still achieve that kind of earnings in today's commodified market?

AtlasLion• 11 years ago

It started selling way before digital photography, that could explain a lot of it.

stevesearer2• 11 years ago

Just found another article which describes other popular stock photos that continue to sell and most of them are older, pre-digital photos as well.

The record for a single sale, he says, was about $35,000. “It still brings in some hefty money,” he says. [1]

[1] http://www.pdnonline.com/features/Stock-Photos-That-Ke-1294....

Animats2• 11 years ago

I never saw that image before, and it's obviously fake. You just can't see through that much seawater.

afterburner• 11 years ago

And the bottom of such a huge iceberg can't possible be as well lit as if the sun was hitting it from below. (And of course it looks like that because it's an above water shot, flipped.)

kaffeemitsahne• 11 years ago

(And of course it looks like that because it's an above water shot, flipped.)

Doh. I was imagining him actually flipping an iceberg upside-down for some reason.

thyrsus• 11 years ago

I've seen the image several times, and I'd always assumed it was a painting, using photo-realist techniques.

protomyth2• 11 years ago

Yeah, I thought it was someone that does the background painting for movies. The physics of taking that photograph just didn't seem possible.

jldugger• 11 years ago

It's also lit from below, because you know, the ocean floor is bright and reflective.

bmm6o2• 11 years ago

"Fake" is a little strong. As he says at the end of the article, you couldn't capture an image like that with a single photograph. He strove for accuracy, but who knows how close he got - the article doesn't go into that. His clients thought it was realistic enough and evocative enough to give him $1m.

prewett2• 11 years ago

The image purports to show a mass of hidden iceberg underneath the water. What it show instead is two above-water icebergs, one of which was flipped upside-down. That is totally fake in my book. If it happens to be accurate (and like you say, we have no information about that), it might correctly illustrate the idea, but the photograph is still fake.

aaron695• 11 years ago

Other than being fake in every photographic sense it's also scientifically fake.

Obviously icebergs don't have that much under the water and they look significantly different in the underwater section.

I couldn't see it getting much faker.

nkurz• 11 years ago

Obviously icebergs don't have that much under the water

What do you mean, and in what sense is this obvious?

bmm6o2• 11 years ago

Obviously icebergs don't have that much under the water

The popular notion that 90% is underwater is approximately correct: http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=iipHowMuchOfAnIcebergIs.... Or are you claiming that the picture in question doesn't represent a 10/90 split?

jberryman2• 11 years ago

icebergs turn over quite often, as the seawater eats away at the bottom until they become top-heavy. When they do you get that really strange brilliant blue color which comes from dense glacial ice which has had all the air bubbles forced out.

stevesearer2• 11 years ago

Here was a funny recent story regarding different iceberg photos with that effect: http://petapixel.com/2015/02/03/contest-copyright-controvers...

jberryman2• 11 years ago

Ha I love that story! Very postmodern

theandrewbailey• 11 years ago

That blue is unearthly.

like this: http://www.alexcornell.com/antarctica/ and this: http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tonyt/Tonys_site/My_Albums/Pag...

gene-h• 11 years ago

Now the interesting thing to do would be to take one of these iceberg pictures for real. Since we can't see through this much see water the thing to do is make a huge grid of cameras and put it directly up against the iceberg.

Alternatively, once could lower a line of cameras to scan the iceberg.

elchief• 11 years ago

"see water" heh

prewett2• 11 years ago

I was curious if there were any real iceberg pictures. I think I found a few:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthpicturegalleries/...

http://www.divephotoguide.com/underwater-photography-special...

pcunite• 11 years ago

If it looks too good to be true ...

The World's Most Inspirational Iceberg Is a Fake

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