2014 Sony World Photo Short List

Not all are nature-themed, but there are some extraordinary photos among this year's short list of finalists.

The insect based shots have me wondering how vigilant the contest is about posed photos... The "dancing" insects especially look like posed specimens to me - though I'm by no means an insect expert.

Here's an article with a lot of similar photos and claims about how these type of shots are faked, which to me lends a lot of doubt to any more-than-natural looking photos of frogs/lizards/insects displaying abnormal behavior that I see.

The article is pretty speculative, and not very rigorously reported, so I try to take it with a grain of salt, but there are a lot of setup shots out there.

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Other than that, it's a great set of photos. I especially like the Wildebeest, the trains, and the skiers. Some great images there.

The first shot of the Red Eyed Tree Frog on the Rhinoceros Beetle was either staged or composited. That scene would just not happen in nature. I don't mind shots that are setup as long as they are disclosed as such. The link that David pointed to above has a bunch of tree frogs under leaves that were set up to look like umbrellas. One of those images was recently posted on 500px. It made it to the number one image in the popularity contest. Several of us pointed out that it was fake. The photographer was defiant that it was not. What a bunch of @#$%.

Photo No. 7 is by member Emmanuel Coupe. It has been previously posted here and received high praise. Congratulations Emmanuel. The image deserves to be on the short list.