[Mollocephalus]

Originally Posted by Spenner

Alright so these may look impressive, but do not be fooled: every one of these is a composite.

#1: The shadows on the hands are distinctly grey in tone, which would not be the case in a natural setting. They are also unrealistically soft. The highlights on some of the arms have been painted on, they lack the sharp specular nature that real ones would have. Some of the reflections lack distortion too.

#2: Paper is a pretty big indicator here, especially the one on the left within the briefcase. It has clear perspective issues, and that's mostly because of the mistake of the shadow at the bottom of said page: just shouldn't be there. It would have to be right up against the metal bracket to get that shadow happening. The pants are also a clear indicator of a composite photo, for obvious reasons in the highlights. ALSO: shadow from the briefcase onto the paper below looks fake as hell.

#3: This one's easy. The highlights on the ridges of the face that are along the water are painted in. The reflection is a vertically motion blurred version of whats above. The linearity of the rain indicates it was also just painted in + motion blurred. It has a distinct guassian blur to it which would not happen with a real camera lens.

#4: Gotta say, really awful depth of field here, and I actually am liking this photographer less by the minute, if in fact he is trying to pass these off as legit photos. The big "C" fabric to the left; how would the middle/bottom of it be sharp but the top part blurry, if it is further away from the subject? Bad attention to detail. Out of focus areas are clearly smudged looking because of a gaussian blur.

#5: Not as bad. Can't exactly tell if the rain is fake or not in this one, they're just too small. But they still feel gimmicky after seeing that other fake rain photo. The biggest downfall is something I'm not sure about, but think might've been added out of desperation: look at the "bokeh" at the bottom blurry spots in the image. Only some bokeh is present, other parts look gaussian blur'd. This means the photographer has likely brought in an out of focus photo, and blend moded over the gaussian blur to make it look more natural >_____________> really low blow if my speculation is true.

#6: No reflection in water, no upper parts of the suit are wet (by nature of taking steps in such deep of water, you would have spots of the suit wet that are higher up). Balloons guassian blurry, the one that is 2nd furthest back was just lazily flipped horizontally.

#7: No shadow at all on the on-fire fabric onto the body. If the rope has shadowy definition, so should the body. Really nerdy here but there are jagged pixels along the edges of the body which indicate it's been cropped and they've used "Make edge" with increased contrast. You would have a slightly fuzzy pixel edge if natural.

SO, hope I'm not bursting a bubble here, but I think this kind of photography is upright disrespectful, and should be said STRAIGHT UP if it is a composite or not. Otherwise, you're a cheating liar, who is being childish by denying the truth of your work.

My face while reading this post:



I do like the atmosphere in some of his pictures. They do not seem to convey any meaning per se but some of them are appealing to the eye and have a faintly evocative feeling. However, i really hope he doesn't try to pass these as photographic work as this is nothing more than deviantart tier digital manipulation, or slightly above that.