STUNNING IMAGE

stolen with respect to the originals at

http://www.athropolis.com/news/berg-pic.htm for the text and to

http://fazigu.org/~quinn/ejokes/ for the image


A Beautiful ... but Impossible Photograph

This dramatic picture of an iceberg weighing approximately 300 million tonnes has been represented as taken by a drilling rig manager off the coast of Newfoundland.

Supposedly, the water was calm and the sun was almost directly overhead so that the diver was able to get into the water and take the picture.

But how could anyone take such a picture? The maximum visibility in water is 200 feet. You could never see the underside of an iceberg that size in one shot - and where does all the light come from at that depth?

In fact, the picture is not real. It is a digital composite by

Ralph Clevenger,

a nature and underwater photographer who finds the stories circulating about his "impossible" picture amusing.

Four separate images were used; the sky, the background, the top iceberg (shot in Antarctica), and the underwater iceberg (shot above water in Alaska and flipped upside down).

The picture does, however, accurately represent the amount of an iceberg that is hidden underwater. It was designed to illustrate the concept of "what you see is not necessarily what you get".