Urban Legends

Earlier today I posted a photograph of an enormous iceberg that a Newfoundland rig manager supposedly snapped while being underwater. Thanks to Mark McQuaid - one of our long-term clients - I can correct my mistake and provide accurate information.

This image was produced in 1999 by Ralph A. Clevenger, a professional nature and underwater photographer who is also a member of the faculty of the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California. As Mr. Clevenger explained, this image is not a single photograph but a composite of four different photographs (not all taken in the same place):

The iceberg image is a digital composite designed to illustrate the concept of "what you see is not necessarily what you get". As an underwater photographer I knew that my "vision" of what a big iceberg looks like was impossible to get in reality so I had to create it. The image exists in nature but due to water visibility is not possible to capture on film.

There are 4 separate images involved; the sky, the background, the top iceberg (shot in Antarctica), and the underwater iceberg (shot above water in Alaska and flipped in the final composite).

This information came from the Urban Legends Reference Pages at Snopes.com. This is a great site to verify whether something is true or not.

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