Can someone debunk this Peter Lik picture... PLEASE!!!

[KitH]

It's taken in the Kodachrome Basin in Utah.  It must be pointing east (or thereabouts, depending on the Moon's declination).  He's said he's on a cliff top but with a lens of that size he's not going to be too far from a road.   A look at Google Maps puts him about 1000' below the mountains at the eastern rim of Kodachrome basin, so he's not horizontal he's pointing slightly upwards. 

Where does that skyglow come from?   There's pink clouds lit by city lights and the nearest big city to the east is Colorado Springs and that's over 400 miles away.  That's a big ask to illuminate clouds with such definition from that distance, they'd have to be really high up and noctilucent clouds don't look like that.   

Still with the clouds.  The Moon subtends an angle of around half a degree, similar to the sun, that means the colour gradient of those clouds is much less, so without the lens the boundary between pink and blue would look much more sharply defined, city glow is scattered light and fades slowly.   

If that cityglow can degrade the contrast in the stars shining through then it should also alter the contrast of bottom part of the Moon too.  It doesn't. 

I'd be astonished if this wasn't a composite or at very least, extremely post processed. 

 

[Fleetie]

One other thing:

Why is there a place called "Kodachrome Basin"?

If there is such a place, why is it so called? Curious now!


EDIT: Never mind; wikipedia told me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome_Basin_State_Park

[KitH]

One other thing:

Why is there a place called "Kodachrome Basin"?

If there is such a place, why is it so called? Curious now!


EDIT: Never mind; wikipedia told me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome_Basin_State_Park

Wikipedia missed out telling us it's a place that gives us those nice bright colors, the greens of summers. 
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, or whatever it was Paul Simon said,  but he had a Nikon so what does he know anyway? 

[c3hammer]

I've been lurking here for awhile and thought this one was an interesting discussion.

There's a tiny possibility that it's somewhat real.  If you were to have an 800mm lens with 2x converter and put the bush way out across a canyon, then crop to a smaller resolution, it might just be possible to get some sort of HDR to work like that.

Here's a video I took with a T3i and a 600mm lens at about 8:00am in the morning.  It switches back and forth between the 3x crop mode and 1x  You'll notice I moved the cam each time to get it close the same location on the outcropping.

Setting Moon	Small | Large

On the APS-C cams with a 1.6 crop factor and a the 3x zoom you get an equivalent focal length of 2880mm on the T3i.  I shot this one over Salt Lake so the heat waves are rediculous, but it still gives an idea of how such a thing might be possible with a RAW HDR of some sort.

Cheers,
Pete

[unfocused]

Just a little bit different take on this. Reading the photographer's commentary, I notice it is very carefully worded. He gives the impression that this was a single shot, but he never actually says so – all in the marketing.

I suspect that the prospectus that calls it a "double exposure" is a bit of word play as well. Double exposure as in two different exposures blended together in Photoshop.

What is really funny though is this:

...my pulse raced, I could hear the blood running through my veins.

I hope he had a surgeon nearby if he could hear the blood running through his veins. Sounds like a warning sign of a stroke of some sort.

[Hillsilly]

Make sense it if it is a double exposure (and he doesn't say its not).  Perhaps he used some form of circular stencil to give the moon greater definition and remove some haze around the edges.  This would explain why it has such a circular shape with no craters around the edge. 

There's no reason why the moon can't appear that big.  He's just using his perspective to achieve the result he wants. 

[Axilrod]

As someone who shoots the moon frequently, and has for several years, I feel I can say with confidence that there is no way that is a single-exposure shot. If the previous comments including an explanation of the exposure are correct, then this is definitely a composite shot of two exposures...one of the moon in isolation, and one of the landscape. I think that can be proven as well.

First, some of the soft stuff. Even with an 800mm lens, I don't believe it would be possible to get this particular perspective right. For one, even at a narrower aperture like f/11 (which is unlikely, given the brightness of the moon, its rate of motion across the sky, etc....indicating the f/2.8 aperture would have had to have been used), the DOF on an 800mm f/2.8 lens is going to be really, really thin...I don't see any logical way one could expose the scene THAT unbelievably sharp with the infinite depth of field that would be necessary to expose the moon with such stupendous clarity without blurring the foreground to some degree. Second, I've shot the moon plenty with 400mm, and I don't think that its ever been large enough in the frame to indicate that an 800mm lens would produce a nearly frame-filling image, especially with that amount of sharpness and clarity (accounting for camera shake, optical aberrations at f/2.8, even factoring in the quadruple mag. for double focal length rule). The fact that its all super crisp tweaks my "Fishy!" sensor just a bit too much.

What really seals the coffin shut, though, is the blatant oversight of the background sky. There are clearly visible clouds near the pinkish horizon that are NOT visible in FRONT of the moon. These clouds are even mentioned in the narrative! That tripped my "Bogus!!" sensor hard. The way the photographer wrote his little narrative, he certainly made it sound like the photo was a single-shot composition that literally took him a lifetime to achieve (emphasis added):

The golden sphere slowly rose in front of me. I was totally stunned. I couldn't believe it. So connected to this lunar giant that I was trembling. Such an impact on my life. I pressed the shutter, a feeling I'll never forget. The moon, tree, and earth.

The mysterious white-knuckling lens is never actually identified (and an 800mm f/2.8 lens, if it exists, would probably need a small CRANE to mount onto the largest, sturdiest mount known in all the lore of photography, no amount of single-handed white-knuckling would move such a monstrosity). The details are overlooked. The whole narrative and the concept in generally really tweak me the wrong way. I'm not really sure what the photographer is trying to do here, however it really seems like he is purposefully, but badly, trying to lie to his potential (and sadly naive) customers for this shot that SCREAMS:

FAAAAKE!!

It was established earlier that it WAS two exposures : f/11 @ 1/250 second and f/2.8 @ 20 second

[Orangutan]

Why the need to "debunk" whatever story he has to tell.

He produced a good image, and he has prints for sale.

I can tell you that if I were to produce an image that good, I wouldn't tell anyone how I did it. I'd have you running all over creation chasing the tales I told about it. But I sure wouldn't give you the truth.

The guy gave us a wonderful visual image -- more than we deserve. He owes me nothing.

There's nothing else to it for me.

First, I want to say that I'm not talking about photojournalism which, I believe, we pretty much all agree should not be "faked."  Nor am I talking about purely commercial photography intended purely for marketing.
 
There seems to be a divide between people who ask nothing more of a photo than that it be appealing, and those who find part of the appeal in its context.  To me, art always includes context.  For example, consider modern artists who do abstract, almost random works.  Without knowing that these folks used to do perfect portraits in art school, you might think it was random crap made by just throwing paint on a canvas.  The context tells you there is, or might be, a deeper meaning in the work.


Photographic context begins with the characteristic that is unique to photography among the visual arts: the fact that the "palette" comes from reality.  A painter's palette is just paint waiting for the brush; a sculptor's palette is the marble from which some Michelangelo will remove all the parts which are not the statue.  How much of a photograph is "real" is important because it tells me something about a photographer's intent.  Consider a close-up photograph of a tiger staring straight into the camera.  Does it have a different meaning if the photographer said it was "in the wild" with a 200mm lens vs. in a zoo or game park with a 600mm lens?  It does to me.  "How" a work was produced is important to its value as art.

While I agree that it's acceptable to manipulate images, it's not acceptable to lie about it.  It's OK to remain silent as to the origin also.  Lying about the origin of a photo is cheating the viewer out of the context of the photo. 

In this case, it appears that the photographer may be lying outright about how he made the image.  To you this does not matter; however, apparently it mattered to Mr. Lik enough that he went to the trouble of presenting a full back-story on the creation of the image.  One must assume that's also meaningful to the buyers of his prints as well.  If this is true, he is, metaphorically, marketing a photo of a captive tiger as though it were a wild tiger.  And that ain't cool.

[5D Freak]

I see a lot of people having a crack each way. Here's one of mine. This is a full 360 degree panorama done in the southern hemisphere. Star trails done with stars intact and real. Done with 17TS-E. 2hr Exposure. No fisheye used! To my knowedge, this is the first time a full 360 pano with star trails has ever been made without the use of a fisheye lens.

[Blaze]

This is certainly more than just a double exposure. (Obviously it can't be a single exposure since the moon is so much brighter than the stars and the shaded part of the moon is never darker than the sky beside it). It is clearly a composite of at least two separate images (with different composition, not just different exposure). This scene cannot exist.

Let's review the problems with it compiled from various people's comments.

• The moon is in front of the clouds in the background.
• The shadowed part of the moon must be opposite of the sun.
• A full moon is always in the opposite part of the sky the sun, not in nearly the same direction.
• The orientation of the moon is wrong. (It is rotated relative to how it would appear in reality.)

The moon was shot in a different part of the sky and then pasted into this image.

[drummstikk]

I see a lot of people having a crack each way. Here's one of mine. This is a full 360 degree panorama done in the southern hemisphere. Star trails done with stars intact and real. Done with 17TS-E. 2hr Exposure. No fisheye used! To my knowedge, this is the first time a full 360 pano with star trails has ever been made without the use of a fisheye lens.

Simply a knockout photograph. Van Gogh could never have seen a photo like this during his lifetime, but one can imagine it inspiring his "Starry Night" painting.

[Sunnystate]

Obvious lie in my opinion, and there is no good moral either in this whole story, considering fact that people are paying for this type of "artistic" BS all the time.

[5D Freak]

This is certainly more than just a double exposure. (Obviously it can't be a single exposure since the moon is so much brighter than the stars and the shaded part of the moon is never darker than the sky beside it). It is clearly a composite of at least two separate images (with different composition, not just different exposure). This scene cannot exist.

Let's review the problems with it compiled from various people's comments.

• The moon is in front of the clouds in the background.
• The shadowed part of the moon must be opposite of the sun.
• A full moon is always in the opposite part of the sky the sun, not in nearly the same direction.
• The orientation of the moon is wrong. (It is rotated relative to how it would appear in reality.)

The moon was shot in a different part of the sky and then pasted into this image.

Those that think it is a single exposure - keep it real. That is curtainly not. Totally agree with the above. I have more to add:

-dark side should be the same colour of the sky or slightly lighter;

-depth of field issues regarding taking of a photo of the moon - sorry can't get tree and moon in focus at the same time at 1200+mm focal length at the scale of the tree. I think someone has already pointed this out.

-the moon has been taken at 1/500s (ISO200) at probably the native focal length of a reflector (not refractor) telescope at F11 (Celestron C14 or equivalent Meade). Larger the diameter, the less effect atmospheric abberations have. The moon shot is probably a composite of four images. Stars don't show at these short shutter speeds - only Jupiter, Venus, Sirius, Mars, ect. Not 8 magitude stars as depicted here.

-If that part of the sky is that bright, why are the rocks/tree so dark. Late gibbous phase with the lighting angle would implicate a strong twilight with the sun less than 5deg below the horizon - no stars at that point.
Hey, we can go til the cows come home. This is a dead set composite. Great work still as you can expect from Peter Lik. Love his wide format film work too!

[5D Freak]

If he aquired the necessary shots himself, so what if its a composite. It's not fake. Maybe some of us would have gone about the merging in a different way ( I know I would have). Would have been a pretty easy selection in photoshop! At the end of the day, it's his work, and he earned a great picture! I bet this one sells well! Just think - would you hang that up on your wall? I would (if I didn't display my own).

[wickidwombat]

ROFL

Ok for starters this is the same guy that stole trey ratcliff's HDR of time square and claimed it was his
http://www.stuckincustoms.com/2011/03/31/peter-lik-your-thoughts/

it happens to be the exact photo that trey goes into great detail of the processing of it in one of his ebooks

SOoooo. I would take anything on the peter Lik site with a bag of salt... it might not even be his!