So there I was, paging through the winners of the 2008 National Geographic photography contest and when I came across this one I started wondering…
National Geographic Places winner
Something just wasn’t right, but it took me a while to put my finger on it. And then it struck me: the reflection is not a reflection. The clouds continue in the water, they don’t reflect in the water!
Here’s a reputable institute like National Geographic, organizing a yearly reputable Photography contest with reputable photographers as participants and judges. And they allow a photograph made in Photoshop to win a category? How wrong is that really?
The photographer just shot a picture of a sky (I hope, at least, pictures of a sky are so easy to come by through other means these days, I surely hope he won’t be caught on both cheating AND copyright infringement…) and a picture of some water with some boats on it and combined them in Photoshop.
It’s a gorgeous image, you have to give him that, but National Geographic should never have allowed this to go through in this category. As per their rules for entry:
Minor burning, dodging and/or color correction is acceptable. Hand tinting is acceptable, as is cropping. Fish-eye lenses are acceptable. High dynamic range images (HDRI) and stitched panoramas are acceptable only if the combined parts are all made around the same time. For more information, please read Director of Photography David Griffin’s comments on image manipulation. Any changes to the original Photograph not itemized here are unacceptable and will render the Photograph ineligible for a prize.
It looks like they just took a pic of a sky and a pic with people in the water, and pasted the two on top of each other. Sitruuna is right, the perspective is all wrong and that’s what bugs me personally most.
Okay, the photo has been removed from the Nat Geo site and the prize has been withdrawn. Thanks for your help in correcting this error.
Here’s the statement from the editors:
http://ngm.typepad.com/ngmcom_feedback/2008/12/photo-contest-c.html
The photo has been removed and the prize withdrawn. National Geographic will be issuing a statement shortly. They have been trying to reach the photographer to have him defend his work but he hasn’t responded. I’ll keep you posted.
@Scott:
Yah, I noticed. Seems like more people are on to it 😉
The clouds also don’t recede into the distance as they approach the horizon. The perspective is all wrong. You can tell at a glance.
Really shameless of the photographer, and quite surprisingly inept of National Geographic. It casts doubt on the authenticity of all entries.
Made it on Photoshop Disasters yesterday. 🙂
Crazy! Interested to hear what comes of this.
Must be exciting to be the winner – only waiting for somebody to spot the mistake and shout out loud. One can’t expect to pull out of this without anybody noticing, so it’s only a question of WHEN it becomes publicly known that it’s a fake.
So did you contact them about your observation? What did they say?