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

[gol]

This picture of the moon looks similar (except for clarity, sharpness, etc.) -- but was taken a 1:17 am in No. Cal.  Wouldn't it have looked the same at 7 pm?  No stars, though.

Oops -- some trees slipped in there!

Is this site in Hong Kong?  (Given the after 2 pm time on the post...)

[scrappydog]

I think some of his other works are also composites or significant alterations to the image - One example - his "Timeless Land" shot - http://www.lik.com/thework/canyons-arches/timelessland.html .  The La Sals are just too magnified, too peaked; or too stretched against the reality.  Now perhaps its a super long lens but then I can not see how the arch would fill the frame in the natural way it does.  The focal lengths just dont match.

This shot looks manipulated, as does the source image for this thread... and he uses Trey Ratcliffe's photos to promote himself?  The dude is the Milli Vanilli of master photographers.

[SFischer]

I believe it is too good to be true.  I too have strived to capture such an image and have gone to a lot of effort to find such a tree in the foreground, plan a location to shoot from such that the scale of the tree would be about that of the diameter of the moon.  One of the tricks is getting far enough away (about 1 mile for a 50 foot tall tree). This requires at least a 500mm lens, and ideally with a TC.  You also have to plan on being in the right position at the right time, which requires careful use of a compass. Even then it is difficult to be exactly right when the moon starts poping up over the horizon so you need to be prepared to grab your big lens and run and resetup. When it starts rising you only have a few minutes before it passes up above the tree.  And if you can get lucky enough to be in position and setup, you still need to get the focus proper such that you have enough depth of field between the tree and the moon.  Because of the speed of the moon's movement past the tree, you will be limited as to the maximum aperture while still having enough exposure for the moon.

The attached photo reflects my efforts in this endeavor, captured with a 500mm f/4 with a 50D at ISO 800, f/8, and 1/30sec with quite a bit of cropping.  As you can the sharpness is not even close to what Peter Lik has captured.  I would imagine he would have needed at least 1/250sec to get enough sharpness on the moon.  Theoretically you could get the hyperfocal distance at f/11, so you would probably need an extra 4 stops of performance compared to the photo I have here.  Given the Canon 50D is little long in the tooth, more modern cameras would be better, but the sharpness of this photo seems hard to fathom given either the magnification, implying an even higher aperture to get the necessary hyper-focal distance relationship or a sensor of remarkable performance.

Also as some other posters have commented, this would have to have been taken just after sunset. Judging from the sky it looks about 45 to 60 minutes after sunset. The stars would not be this bright, especially with a full moon.

[SFischer]

A few other comments after posting my reply. The tree in Peter Lik's image looks like it is not that big. Guessing it is about half the size of the oak I captured in my image, it would put it at about 25 feet.  That may imply he was only about ~2000-3000 feet away from the tree. According to my depth-of-field calculations he would need to be at f/18 for a 500mm lens or about f/32 for a 600mm.  Getting such a fast exposure seems incredible at that aperture to retain sharpness on both.

The other point that seems suspicious is the moon is not full.  That implies it would not be rising until perhaps 2-3 hours minimum after sunset from the phase depicted. I would not expect the sky to have that type of glow. My intuition says that it looks to be on the wrong horizon for that of the moon rise. The only other possible explanation is the glow at the horizon is that of some distance man-made lights (i.e. city).

[moreorless]

Can't say I care too much whether its "real" or not but I do care that its garish rubbish.

[wickidwombat]

Can't say I care too much whether its "real" or not but I do care that its garish rubbish.

But hes sold 200 million in limited edition prints and is a master of photography!   and has memberships to all the exclusive clubs

But on a more serious note i do feel like saying "put down the mouse and step away from the saturation slider!" with a loud horn

[LetTheRightLensIn]

good point!

instead of saying "i pointed my lens at the moon, released the shutterr and bang.... i got this great image". he could be a bit more "honest" in how he "produced" this image.

exactly!

i can produce all kind of great images in post. fantastic landscapes never seen before.

but he makes it sound like it´s pure photographic excellence.
and he does it with purpose i think.

there is no word about doing heavy postprocessing on the image, blending two images etc. in the text below the image.

every serious landscape photograph will write that he used a ND filter to hold back the sky or uses image blending to get details in the sky. but this guy....

The desert silence was stunning, my pulse raced, I could hear the blood running through my veins. Then, I saw the horizon starting to glow. 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.

Wow, I just read here that this was the $1 million dollar guy.
To get to the point where you can fetch $1 mil you have to be quite the operator and his prose, which is at best, a least a tiny bit of lies (he clearly implies a single snap of shutter which is absolutely impossible, what is for debate is whether it could be two different exposures pasted and combined from the same or two entirely different shots having nothing at all to do with each other combined, lots of odd things with super-tele and bright sky and no star streaks etc too).

[LetTheRightLensIn]

I just read his biography, and holy smokes, he's made some serious cash including a single sale at $1,000,000:

http://www.petapixel.com/2011/01/13/australian-landscape-photographer-peter-lik-sells-photo-for-1-million/

Yeah, and here's his backstory for that winning snap:

I will never forget this morning for the rest of my life. It was calm, and the scent of the fall forest filled my lungs. The mist cleared, and a magical reflection in the river briefly appeared. White birch trees, black trunks, a kaleidoscope of foliage combining to reveal an illusion of three dimensions. I pressed the shutter – once – and then the scene vanished with the morning breeze, never to be seen again.

In the light of recent discussions, I wonder whether the above actually translates to:

It was a cold morning and my head was banging after a night on the whisky with my mate. I sparked up a fag and fired up the computer to see whether I could coax a usable image out of anything from my last nature shoot. Bleary-eyed, I went into Photoshop, feeling about as inspired as a science student in a double-R.E. lesson on a wet winter Wednesday....

 

A scene like that is extremely unlikely to only be there for a second or two, almost surely did not just vanish (unless he includes perhaps that ripple pattern and it was either complete chop or dead calm otherwise or something)

It's his pretentious and fakery prose that are annoying.

[LetTheRightLensIn]

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

But then on his main presentation page why does he go on with his babble about how he pressed the shutter, trembling and got moon, tree and earth? At the very least he is being annoying and telling a minor lie there. For what? To seem pretentious enough to get $1 mil sales I guess.

And if he used the same 400-500 2.8 and cropped a lot for both exposures shouldn't he get some star trails at 20s and the other link I see says an 800mm was used so who makes an 800mm 2.8.

Anyway whatever, but if you are marketing to build up picture worth it seems wrong to mislead.

Maybe this is all a new episode of Seinfeld, J Peterman into photography now.

[jrista]

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

It was claimed as much, not sure that it was ever verified. The simple fact of the matter is, the exposure settings and count are not included on the page linked from the OP. I thought a little bit of analysis of the image might settle things a bit more.

[AnthonyWithNoH]

Simply by looking at it you can tell that it's multiple exposures... no way that the moon would have shadows like that while the sky/stars would be exposed in that way. Also the edges of the moon are way to perfectly intact... absolutely no aberration or distortion at this focal length/perspective? I suppose stories like that one sell much better then saying you devised it in Photoshop...

[JustMo]

wow..others have issues with this like I do....nothing wrong with photoshop, post process, etc....but..do not hype it as something else....for instance, I will add my fun stuff...for a practice piece of mine...2 combined real photos I had taken..."after months on the great lakes in stormy seasons, I planned a night and rowed out from shore (at great risk of drowning) while a fog bank was coming in, fighting the raging waves, the cold frigid air freezing my skin...waiting and waiting for hours, bailing water from the dingy, the fog parted and there was the moon...I grabbed my shot, heart beating, as I knew this was a once in a lifetime capture...million dolllarrrrssss"

[jhpeterson]

I saw this Peter Lik photo at one of his galleries in Florida a couple weeks back.  It is much more impressive when seen firsthand than it appears here!
After closely looking at the print, I have no doubt it is composed of multiple exposures.  The moon, the tree and the stars all appear to be separate images, taken with lenses of varying focal lengths (very long, much wider and fast, respectively), then carefully processed and assembled into the final result. 
Sure, it's not a straight print and it has been heavily manipulated, but I think the high level of craftsmanship outweighs its detractors' complaints.  While Lik is a great marketer, he's also a pretty good photographer, too!

[jrista]

Just to provide another example of large moon perspective and DOF, here is one of my shots from a couple years ago. I was quite a ways from the treetops...much farther than you might think, and they were still blurred a bit out of focus:



Single exposure shot with Canon 450D and Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L lens. Here are the EXIF details (which should also be embedded in the image above, for those who wish to verify):

Exposure: 0.5s @ f/7.1
Focal Length: 400mm
ISO Speed: 800

This shot was slightly overexposed just enough to show the very light cloud cover and capture just a bit of earthglow. The little blueish dot in the lower right corner is a star peeking through the trees...probably diffracted a bit by the close branches, hence its softness. Its not impossible to get a shot with a large moon...but Peter Lik was keeping information hidden and trying to pull a fast one on his potential customers who are too naive to figure out that his little narrative is carefully worded and the "experience" was entirely bogus.

I don't think its right for a photographer, who apparently makes quite a bit of money off his work, to treat his customers that way. If the bit about Peter Lik stealing an HDR work from one of Stuck In Customs' eBooks is true, he is not only dishonest, he is a thief as well...and thats just not acceptable. You can't help but wonder if Lik is a total sham, and why he stoops to such a low level...on apparently multiple occasions. Its not difficult to be honest...you just have to choose to be.

[Sunnystate]

Here is my take on the moon and landscape.
Will spare you the agony of reading BS descriptions, considering my English.
This is toy Christmas lighthouse, set up in small 10 gal aquarium with some fog from humidifier.
Lots of listening to my blood rushing through my veins and here it is 100% genuine shot.
Can be yours for mere $150, anyone?   

Note: this is not a real offer, so this post should not be removed from the forum as advertising.