Real or Fake?

[Mike Farley]

You decide. It is not the first time that the photographer, Peter Lik, has been at the centre of a controversy.

https://petapixel.com/2018/02/06/peter- ... oon-photo/

[Paul Heester]

One of the comments nails my own thoughts exactly - "Anyone who has spent five minutes shooting the moon knows it is a composite." But not sure if he is marketing the image as 100% real. Either way he's a successful photographer who sells images so he's doing something right. Whether he's bothered by his own peers' opinions while making a good living remains unanswered!

[Paul Heester]

Here's a photographer who captured the recent Blood Moon rising over the London skyline and detailed how he did it - https://petapixel.com/2018/02/06/shot-s ... n-skyline/

Its clear from this post that getting the moon as large in the frame as Peter Lik did is not possible in camera.

[Mike Farley]

But not sure if he is marketing the image as 100% real.

I am not sure if this image is being marketed as shot, but his sales team has made the claim for his other work. Judging by the poll that is part of the PetaPixel article, not many people are convinced of its veracity. As you say, genuine or not, Peter Lik is doing very well from his photographic efforts.

[Peter Boughton]

Without any claim by its author of this specific image being a single frame this is nothing more than engineered outrage and a pitchfork mob.

Although we haven't spoken with anyone working for Lik about this particular image, we imagine they will say....

So it's a complete non-story, written to generate revenue via ad impressions.


If they want to harass the guy, why not do it over the fact that he's made an oversized 50kg book with half the images ruined by having the fold run through the middle, charges three thousand dollars for it but doesn't include shipping with that, and perhaps worst of all describes it with the utterly ridiculous term "a book by definition only".

[Mike Farley]

Without any claim by its author of this specific image being a single frame this is nothing more than engineered outrage and a pitchfork mob.

Quite possibly that is the case. Nowhere on his website can I find a claim that his images are as shot, although there is this:

"Peter has followed his calling to capture and share the most beautiful places on earth."

However, there is anecdotal evidence that his representatives have claimed his images are straight exposures. Since I have never been in the market for one of his works, that is something which I cannot verify personally.

What interests me more is how the image was created. That is something which most photographers will want to know when they see someone else's work. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with composited photos, whether the author admits it or not.

Lik has now owned up to the image being a composite. The link to the PetaPixel article is below. As I say, in itself that is not an issue. However, for whatever reason, it has also been removed from his website. Maybe it was just too controversial to continue selling. He clearly makes a very good living from his photography and will not want anything to detract from that.

For what it is worth, I quite liked it as giving an impression of how the moon can sometimes appear when it is close to the horizon. A few years ago, one evening I was driving past St Catherine's Chapel at Abbotsbury and the moon loomed large behind it. Quite probably it was an optical illusion. My wife was with me and she saw it as well. It was a pity that I did not have a camera with me, although I doubt that the resulting image would have looked the same as what we both observed.

https://petapixel.com/2018/02/12/yes-pe ... composite/