Peter Boughton wrote: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/