Sailboat struck by breaching whale -- is it real or is it Photoshop?

Outposts ran an item Wednesday about a sailboat that was struck by a breaching southern right whale and severely damaged.

The question has been circulating -- is the image real, or has it been Photoshopped?

Outposts reader "sailorchick" posted a comment Thursday morning, posing the question of why the man on the sailboat isn't even looking at the whale, saying that he looks downright relaxed. And, in her opinion, the shadows don't look right.

Below are purported before-and-after images of the incident:

I'm curious what others think, and if I get any updates one way or the other, I'll certainly keep readers posted.

-- Kelly Burgess
twitter.com/latimesoutposts

Upper photo: An image showing a southern right whale breaching near a sailboat off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa on Sunday. Credit: EPA

Lower photo: An image showing the damaged boat. Credit: EPA

Comments

[eddy]

well. Contrast are strange. Something say it's fake before all evidences.

Take a photoshop, copy the picture, now magnified the edge of head of the whale, and what do you see ?
oh oh, there are some strange pixels here...

[j smith]

Ha ha ha. How do you "experts" feel now that gave all your "evidence" as to why it was photoshopped. Now there is a video. Suppose that was "Premiered" lolololol

[Marie S]

It is real apparently! Check the video at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6704191n

[albert]

The shadow is unusual because you can see the shadow of the bright whale on the boat and the veils is in the dark.

[BADGES A GOGO]

It seems quite strange for me... How can such a small boat resist to such a big animal ?...

[jeune loubard debauché]

putin, se faire chier pour une photo, vous avez que ca foutre de chercher des merdes...pfff qu est qu on en a a faire que ce soit truqué ou pas; dans 2 jours tout le monde s en foutra royalement, comme dit mr ledoux, on a chier sur la lune et les gens le croit, putin de nases, aller ,salut

[cinematicbfa]

Regardless of whether the photo/video are shopped or the real article, it's hardly as though the subject content is as worthy of debate as a lot of people are making it seem. It's not bigfoot, nor is it a threat to national security. So what, the swell in the photo "seems to be on a different compositing layer". In terms of the video, I can't see anyone putting that amount of effort into replicating studio-quality motion capture for a second-page news story without wanting recognition.

[Paul]

Find ten mistakes in this photo NFW.
The boat is sailing forward,
whale backward.
Shadow all wrong.
Sailor is clueless.
Fins from another whale on belly.
Tail not from humpback
Tail different direction from breach
Steel stays from mast whole rip into whale
Whale direction not on target for mast

Why? nice try. From a fan of cetaceans.

[whatever]

Ah - bet all of you who thought it was fake feel pretty dumb now that there is actually video footage of it. So much for all your shadow talk....

[Pekka14]

So what about the video? Google "whale hits kayak" video and see how easy it is. (That one is a fake, by the way.) The so-called "proof" is much worse quality. It's just too easy nowadays to manufacture these things.

[pixelsofu]

All you have to do is look at THE VIDEO that was also captured of the whale breaching/ The amazing thing is that it was captured both on still AND video camera!
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/outposts/2010/07/video-surfaces-of-sailboat-struck-by-breaching-whale.html

[chrish]

Who took the picture?

[Art60]

Definitely shopped!
Jpeg compression / original image resolution are not the same for the whale and the boat, you can tell from those smooth thin lines from the sail at the right opposed to the square and brute white spots on the whale at the left hand, whose contrast has had to be adjusted to match the scene.

[PME]

I thought it was real, at first, too. However, the water in the foreground suggest rolling seas, and the water in the background looks as if the weather is perfectly calm. Also, as a previous post mentioned, the water line is very distinct and sharp in the whale photo, and soft and natural-looking in the "after" photo. Also, I, too, wondered why there is absolutely no damage to the skin of the boat. Being a boat made of metal, is should have shown at least some damage from a whale that size.

[Deb]

For one it almost looks like the whale is belly facing the boat rather than backside the way they typically breach. It was said to thrash on deck before going back in the water and yet it withstood FORTY TONS of weight and the wood cabin appears to have suffered damage but isn't completely demolished. If you look at the photo where the whale is breaching the boat has a double rail with a banner hanging on it and in the latter photo you can see the double rail and banner have held up. Seriously? One article said the whale was *bigger* than the ship and this is all the damage it did? No roll-over, tipping or sinking, nobody injured and neither was even knocked into the water? I know it was steel sided but still. To me the damage is no more than I would expect their collapsing mast to have caused. And the whale watching patron that caught this amazing moment on film is not in the news? I'm not buying it.

[LovethoseInternetexperts]

Um, sorry gang. All of you who are drawing conclusions from the photos need to watch the video that CBS News has. This incident is as real as the day you were born.

[bob cuomo]

At first I thought it was real, but the more I look at that photo I'm having second thoughts. If that whale actually landed on the boat, I think there would have been much more damage. And why isn't the guy looking at the whale? The key question is, how in the heck did the boat get damaged like that?

[whale watcher]

None of the articles have mentioned the photographer's name, just described as a tourist. It seems that if this person had the camera at the ready to snap the photo of the whale just above the boat, they would have been able to get a subsequent photo of the whale actually crashing down onto the boat. Until I see that image, it seems dubious to me.

[Fred Gates]

I came to my computer tonight to Google this as I saw the photos in the news and they didn't look right to me either.

First: reality. Something that happened in a split-second is perfectly centered in the frame, in focus. The whale is in slightly sharper focus than the boat, which makes no sense.

Then, the shadows. Although the whale is in light so bright its makes the water on it gleam, it casts a dull shadow that only seems to fall on the edge of the boat, and no where inside it. The light on the whale seems to be coming from almost directly overhead while the boat has longer shadows (later in day?). The most tell-tale Photoshop artifice to me is the single (hard, unnatural) wave line that somehow masks both the bottom of the whale and the boat, as if both sit below it like an upside-down scrim or curtain.

There is no disturbance of the water surface in front of this device, it has no transparency (you might see the whale or a shadow of it through a real wave), and it is strangely consistent in flat color throughout... not what you would actually see.

You'll see in the second photo what a real wave of that sort looks like. The possibility that a single, discreet wave (with a hard edge) would somehow be the same edge that two, more-or-less randomly placed objects would come out of is close to zero.

Asa graphic design professional and Photoshop user I'd have to say: this is a fake. And not that good of one too.

[Sailin Dude]

In my opinion its photoshopped!!! Do these people realize what a 40 ton whale would do to a boat that looks no more than 30 feet long. Besides sink it the deck or at least the doghouse would have collapsed. Plus the dude looks totally relaxed

[Popeye The Sailor Man]

Why is their a ship in the background on one and not the other?