
The World's Most Inspirational Iceberg Is a Fake - signaler
http://nautil.us/blog/the-worlds-most-inspirational-iceberg-is-a-fake
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prewett
I was curious if there were any real iceberg pictures. I think I found a few:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthpicturegalleries/...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthpicturegalleries/8893850/The-
ethereal-beauty-of-melting-icebergs-captured-by-photographer-Paul-
Souders.html?image=2)

[http://www.divephotoguide.com/underwater-photography-
special...](http://www.divephotoguide.com/underwater-photography-special-
features/article/underwater-iceberg-photography)

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GBond
> We’re still making sales. It’s approaching $1 million. I get about 40
> percent of that. It put my kids through college.

Wow. Can a stock image still achieve that kind of earnings in today's
commodified market?

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AtlasLion
It started selling way before digital photography, that could explain a lot of
it.

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stevesearer
Just found another article which describes other popular stock photos that
continue to sell and most of them are older, pre-digital photos as well.

>The record for a single sale, he says, was about $35,000. “It still brings in
some hefty money,” he says. [1]

[1] [http://www.pdnonline.com/features/Stock-Photos-That-
Ke-1294....](http://www.pdnonline.com/features/Stock-Photos-That-
Ke-1294.shtml)

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AlbertoGP
As a supplement to that article, here is a blog post linking to it that
contains those pictures:

[http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.de/2010/12/shelf-life-for-
sto...](http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.de/2010/12/shelf-life-for-stock-images-
running.html)

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bcraven
Here's a video with the photographer about the image:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NeyTEO_JP0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NeyTEO_JP0)

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Animats
I never saw that image before, and it's obviously fake. You just can't see
through that much seawater.

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thyrsus
I've seen the image several times, and I'd always assumed it was a painting,
using photo-realist techniques.

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protomyth
Yeah, I thought it was someone that does the background painting for movies.
The physics of taking that photograph just didn't seem possible.

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Animats
It would be a real challenge to actually photograph the entire underwater part
of an iceberg. It's probably never been done. If you could find one in clear
water, and set off some enormous set of flashes underwater, it just might be
possible. That would be a good project for National Geographic.

~~~
protomyth
I'm not sure the local whale population would be too happy with setting off
something underwater to generate that much light. Would be interesting,
though.

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gene-h
Now the interesting thing to do would be to take one of these iceberg pictures
for real. Since we can't see through this much see water the thing to do is
make a huge grid of cameras and put it directly up against the iceberg.

Alternatively, once could lower a line of cameras to scan the iceberg.

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elchief
"see water" heh

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jberryman
icebergs turn over quite often, as the seawater eats away at the bottom until
they become top-heavy. When they do you get that really strange brilliant blue
color which comes from dense glacial ice which has had all the air bubbles
forced out.

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stevesearer
Here was a funny recent story regarding different iceberg photos with that
effect: [http://petapixel.com/2015/02/03/contest-copyright-
controvers...](http://petapixel.com/2015/02/03/contest-copyright-controversy-
crazy-coincidence/)

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jberryman
Ha I love that story! Very postmodern

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bmm6o
"Fake" is a little strong. As he says at the end of the article, you couldn't
capture an image like that with a single photograph. He strove for accuracy,
but who knows how close he got - the article doesn't go into that. His clients
thought it was realistic enough and evocative enough to give him $1m.

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aaron695
Other than being fake in every photographic sense it's also scientifically
fake.

Obviously icebergs don't have that much under the water and they look
significantly different in the underwater section.

I couldn't see it getting much faker.

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bmm6o
> _Obviously icebergs don 't have that much under the water_

The popular notion that 90% is underwater is approximately correct:
[http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=iipHowMuchOfAnIcebergIs...](http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=iipHowMuchOfAnIcebergIsBelowTheWater).
Or are you claiming that the picture in question doesn't represent a 10/90
split?

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pcunite
If it looks too good to be true ...

