Photoshopping not caught in National Geographic Competition

Frequently when an amazing shot is shown on the web it's subjecet to criticism and speculation on whether or not it's real. It's unfortunate, but an obvious consequence of free and easy use of Photoshop.

The Photoshop Disasters blog now features this post of an obviously manipulated image. This image won a viewers choice selection on National Geographics website. (Select "Viewers Choice" in the drop-down, then the fourth pic from the left.) While it's a beautiful creation, the reflection is obviously not real, and I'm somewhat surprised that it wasn't caught, seeing as how it's clearly against the rules. Of course, this was a relatively minor online competition, but still featured on the NG site.

This kind of thing, I assume, only serves to increase skepticism that all viewers will have over any and every great image taken - if viewers trust wasn't completely ruined already.

Did the judges ever take a science class. The reflections would have "reflected" back to the right of the image to mirror the clouds above the horizon. How obvious is that shot?????????

Well, it was a viewer's choice, so I don't know if there were formal judges. In any case, apparently they didn't have very good screeners/editors accepting the competition entries.

The viewer is always right. Right? Sure, this is what we would have called a sandwich back in my slide shooting days. That doesn't disqualify it from being worth a look. Viewers who fret about veracity can only go there in person to see "it" in person. Unfortunately, what we see can't be shared directly with other people, yet.

Pete D.

A few people caught on at the Usefilm site as well, http://www.usefilm.com/image/1443590.html

Viewers who fret about veracity can only go there in person to see "it" in person.

The problem is that this scene may not exist at all in the real world, no matter what anyone's artistic vision of it might be. And it was entered into a competition where you were expressly supposed to enter authentic (as opposed to created) shots. If it was simply hanging in a gallery as art and not pretending to be a somewhat documentary photo, I wouldn't have a problem with it (provided the nature of the photo was understood by the viewer).

The image is no longer there, guess its been removed! I had an interesting experience before the contest ended, looking at the public ratings of some of the entered photos. It was amazing how some of the worst comps, poorly exposed, poorly executed shots got some of the highest ratings. Pretty scary.

Gosh I thought it was a great shot.