Does photo show Kayaker paddling across whales mouth? Fact Check
A photo appears to have captured the moment a kayaker paddles across the open mouth of a large whale emerging from the water.
The photo has being doing the Internet rounds for many years, and has over the years been accompanied by a number of different captions and stories that vary greatly depending on which variant you happen across. An example of the image can be seen below.
Despite the often wild stories that accompany the photo, they’re all false, since the photo itself doesn’t show one moment in time. As many of our viewers may have already deduced, the photo is a composite image, meaning it combines two (or more) different photos digitally merged into one.
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What is perhaps unusual in this case, however, is that both photos in the above image were taken by the same photographer, and it was this photographer himself that created the composite as well. We contacted the photographer Tim Shobe, who explained to us that the image was never meant to trick anyone, rather he had sent it to a few friends through email before it subsequently escaped onto the World Wide Web and was attached to various fake captions by third parties.
When I sent this image to a few friends in an email and then it gets the worldwide attention that it did … wow, how did that happen?!
Tim Shobe explained on his blog that the photos were taken at different times. One photo depicted his friend, who Shobe identifies as Richard Kraft, while the other shows the whale emerging from the water, sans the kayaker, of course.
Shobe had digitally merged the below two photos into one, and it is this composite that has since been circulating the Internet.
Shobe also told us of a time when he frequented a presentation only to see – unbeknownst to others in the room – that his very own composite image appeared.
Recently, I was at a town meeting and the speaker had a large screen presentation to use for his purpose… and before my eyes on the big screen was my whale/kayaker image! Everyone in the room reacted and no one knew it was mine and that I was there and saw it.. funny.
As such, the image is a composite. It isn’t a genuine photo.
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