Real or Fake

Do you think the pic in this link is real or fake? (Click on the pic to enlarge)

http://dragonpagemedia​.com …isplay&idx=1308​&Itemid=36

The pic won 3rd place in a competition for a local Chinese New Year photo competition. I personally don't care about the competition, I neither entered or voted, I'm just curious what ppl think about the picture.

I personally think it's fake as I can't see how the light on the two balloons fits in the the sun. I don't know, but it's just what I think.

What do you guys think?

First look, it does look a bit patched together, though on the site itself they seem convinced... one of the comments says "This is probably the best 'non-cheated' picture in the top 50 so far."
Either way, the balloons don't feel right, even if a flash could account for the lighting on them.

Yah, I'd have to say it's a photoshop job. That first tree looks like it is a separate layer and the opacity has been taken down. Why is it so opaque looking and the branches from the tree right in front of it are not at all? Me thinks suspicious.... I'm pretty sure some of those small branches should be behind the tree not in front of it. That and I think the sun spots on the balloons don't match the rest of the picture. They would be on the back if the sun were behind it and we would not be able to see them I believe. I suppose one could argue that flash caused them, but I'd guess not.

Depends how you define "fake" I guess. I regularly combine two exposures into one photograph. Is that fake?

No expert here, but I believe it looks doctored. No EXIF data to look at. The light reflections on the balloons looks out of place.

Fake. JPEG compression on the balloons clearly does not match the artefacts present on the lamp. Plus, if you look closely, there is a distinct shadow of the uppermost balloon on the one behind it, showing that the lighting source was not coming from any flash, or the sun (unless there was a flash mounted about 10m in the air).

But I don't believe that first tree was added. Looks genuine to me.

Ephemeral wrote in post #5503633
Do you think the pic in this link is real or fake?

Oh, clearly the pic is real.

Lots of evidence, first off, it is 1071 pixels high and 1600 pixels wide. Height and width are traditional characteristics of pictures going back hundreds, even thousands of years. And notice that it is measured in "pixels", which is a poorly spelled contractions of the words "pictures" and "elements" - so something made up of picture elements, is almost by definition, a picture. It has other characteristics of a picture as well, namely tone and (in this case), color - without these it is unlikely to be a picture. Further, when I saved it to my computer, it saved as a "bitmap", evidenced by the .bmp extension. The bitmap is a well known format for saving pictures digitally. As far as I know, ONLY pictures can be successfully saved as a bitmap. (Try changing the extension one of your mp3's to bmp and try to open it in Photoshop - it won't work!)

Nope, all evidence points to this being a real, actual picture.

But the most important characteristic is that it (apparently*) fulfills the artists' vision. Once you have that, I can't see how it can be anything other than a real picture.

Get real, what does it mean: real? If the balloons, trees, fireworks and smoke are captured in one press of the shutter, or if they are painstakingly composited from various exposures who dares say one is "real" and the other isn't.

Think it through, and you will realize that NO photograph is "real". Reality has three dimensions. A photograph ignores one, only giving you height and width. Any attempt at a third dimension (shadows, bokeh, etc) is blatantly fake.

Rad

*If it didn't fulfill the artists vision, I doubt that it would have been entered.

I can't decide whether it is a single shot or multiple shots but to play devil's advocate here's a couple of thoughts:

What if the photographer used portable studio lights to illuminate the balloons? Then the reflections would make some sense.
The yellow balloon has the sun behind it which could factor into its translucency.

The angle and direction of travel of the balloons don't work for me, it screams fish to me, not rat.

I guess this goes to a bigger question; does it matter if its a composite of several images? Some great photographers have used composite images.

Jerry Uelsmann has done some amazing photographs and manipulating and splicing large format negatives and using creative printing methods.


http://www.andrewsmith​gallery.com/images/uel​smann/jerry.jpg

http://shutterbug.com …vesart/0907uels​mann03.jpg

John Paul Caponigro

http://www.johnpaulcap​onigro.com/gallery/

I think both of these photographers work is VERY VALID and they clearly both use multiple images.

I think part of the point is that the contest does not allow any editing per the rules that are posted. I think it is a decent picture, but I am not sure I believe it enough to count it as the winner.

I like the whole concept except for the ballons *L*

iamaelephant wrote in post #5504934
Depends how you define "fake" I guess.

+1.

Upon closer reflection, I believe the image components are as shot (trees, balloons, etc.). The reason I believe that is if I were compositing the image, I would have put in more of the lamppost - or left it out entirely.

Rad

I think the orange balloon in the tree is real which probably gave the creator the idea to add the red ones.

There is a specular highlite on each red balloon that is in the wrong place to be coming from either the sun (which is behind more) or a flash (they're rotated too far toward the left from the "lens'" POV...)

IMO, the red balloons are PS'd in...