Alright, it comes as no surprise that there is a lot of absolute bullshit on the Net. Fake stories and fake photos find there way into my mailbox often enough. The stories are sometimes almost believable until someone directs my attention to a site that claims to debunk the bunk. So many of the stories are BS that I don’t bother to forward any of those bleeding heart stories that claim I have no heart of I don’t forward them. All keyboards have a delete button for a very good reason.
While there are many incredible things in the world and in nature, and there are many incredible photographs on the Net, some that have come my way were clearly faked, easily recognizable not because they were poorly created but because I knew of the location or the original photograph.
Let’s take the example of the tornado and
lightning flash beyond an oil refinery. The story accompanying the photo was
that a worker went out to photograph the lightning and when it flashed he got
the shot, and only then did he see that a tornado was bearing down on the
refinery. Photo aside, the story is absolute rubbish. All accounts I have ever read
about tornados is that they make a noise like a freight train coming through.
Standing outside the worker surely would have heard it. Also, if a tornado was
heading straight for an oil refinery I am sure someone would have heard about
it on the radio, seen it approaching, or been notified. That anyone would be
still working away with danger so near is a hard nut to swallow.
But what gave the story away as a fabrication for me was that the photo of the tornado and lightning bolt is a well-known and often published photo that was captured back in the 90s. It was on the cover of a 1995 Earth magazine issue and has appeared in subsequent journals and texts that use it as an illustration. The refinery image was simply superimposed below the tornado photo where in the original there are only the silhouettes of trees.
Another photo that came my way last week
was a collection of images under the title of “If This IS Earth, Then What is
Heaven Like?” Most of the images were little more than good snapshots of famous
landmarks and locations. The image that grabbed my eye immediately was a photo
of a crescent-shaped island with a star-shaped island at the open edge of the
crescent. It looked like the Turkish flag. As is happens I have been to that
crescent-shaped island. It’s the Molokini Crater, a volcano crater rim half
above the ocean surface, off the coast of Maui. There is no star-shaped island
there. It’s a bogus photo. I found it again while looking for a link at the site linked above.
The last photographs I want to mention are
actually real images of ice. There are some amazing photographs of great
rounded bulks of beautiful blue-green ice formations emerging from icebergs in
Antarctica. The phenomenon, as I understand it, occurs when the ice below the
surface of the ocean melts to the point where the iceberg can no longer stay
upright as a mountain or peak of ice. It then flips over, bringing the smoother
blue-green ice to the surface. When these icebergs get caught amidst other
icebergs and get refrozen and dusted with blowing snow the result is a mass of
usual white cakes of drift ice and icebergs with these massive and stunning
jewels of ice frozen in as part of the whole mass. The official explanation includes thawing and refreezing of water in the iceberg or the original glacier from which it calved. Melt water in glaciers may pool on the surface in beautiful blue or green pools and then later refreeze. However, the story that
accompanied the photos was that it has been so cold in Antarctica these years
(true, I have read that Antarctica has experienced colder than normal
temperatures) that waves were frozen the moment they made contact with the air. Striped ice photos and an explanation are here.
This is ludicrous. First of all, if the water of the ocean froze the moment it made contact with the air then the entire surface would be frozen, not just the waves. Second, a wave wouldn’t freeze instantaneously throughout as first the outside water would freeze and then gradually the freezing would reach the inside of the wave. But as the freezing continued the ice would “float” to the top of the wave and the water in motion would continue moving forward. The result would be very different from the supposed frozen wave image the author of the story would have us believe.
There are some stories that fool me. But
anyone with some knowledge of geography and nature, or at least employing some
common sense, will be able to see the fakes. What I wonder is why people try to fool others like this? Is it because they can? They must be secretly smirking and snickering at the rest of us. I guess since I want to show the beauty of nature through my photography and tell about the amazing wonders of nature I want to know the truth and not some bogus story.
Now I am still trying to figure from the photos of Thai “girls” which ones are actually men. My guess is the most beautiful ones are the guys. Some are just so convincing...
