[Nullifidian]

Here's my analysis of your analysis, spenner!

First off, I don't think he's explicitly trying to pass these off as real. Some of these images are simply impossible to do without editing in the first place. They're fine art photographs and there's plenty of editing in photography as it is already so your assumption of him trying to pass it off as real when it's not is unfounded imo and makes you sound really biased.

Originally Posted by Spenner

#1: The shadows on the hands are distinctly grey in tone, which would not be the case in a natural setting. They are also unrealistically soft. The highlights on some of the arms have been painted on, they lack the sharp specular nature that real ones would have. Some of the reflections lack distortion too.

Shadow color and softness is heavily dependent on context. If it's a cloudy day, then a lot of shadows will be soft and greyish in color so that's really not an issue. The highlights also depend on context and aren't always sharp (especially if it is cloudy). I doubt he'd paint them on if the easy solution is to just get your arm wet and photograph that so I think you're seeing problems for the sake of picking it apart. The reflections are pretty convincing imo at first glance. Only if you start nitpicking you can see it's not -completely- accurate so that's kind of a non-issue.

The real issues though are the inconsistencies in lighting, spatial placement and cropping of the hands. The second highest arm for example has a dark burned shadowline on the right and there are a couple of cast shadows that don't look right. Some of the colors of the hands are slightly off too (like the hand that has the other hand resting on top of it near the center, which also somehow managed to be in front of the hand most center even though that hand looks to be in front of all of the arms). There's also the issue that the water is pretty clear, so you should be able to see the people underwater.

Originally Posted by Spenner

#2: Paper is a pretty big indicator here, especially the one on the left within the briefcase. It has clear perspective issues, and that's mostly because of the mistake of the shadow at the bottom of said page: just shouldn't be there. It would have to be right up against the metal bracket to get that shadow happening. The pants are also a clear indicator of a composite photo, for obvious reasons in the highlights. ALSO: shadow from the briefcase onto the paper below looks fake as hell.

Agree the paper is obvious, but it's not a perspective issue more so a shadow/lighting issue (which technically is part of perspective too but it's handled as a separate criticism). Since paper can fold in a variety of ways and still look convincing, perspective isn't so much the issue here but a lack of understanding of lighting is. The color is also a bit off on the paper, which makes them seem out of place (particularly noticeable in the top left piece of paper).

The highlights on the pants can be passed off as realistic given the fabric and folds. The lighting on the folds is consistent with lighting of the rest of the environment. There's a more obvious sign though, which is the straight cut off on the (for him) left leg's side. There's a small fold near the knee area but it's all a straight cut out. There's also the fact that the legs are missing cast shadows, when the briefcase does have a cast shadow.

Originally Posted by Spenner

#3: This one's easy. The highlights on the ridges of the face that are along the water are painted in. The reflection is a vertically motion blurred version of whats above. The linearity of the rain indicates it was also just painted in + motion blurred. It has a distinct guassian blur to it which would not happen with a real camera lens.

The highlights along the water's edge are consistent with reality since water attaches itself to a surface and that small curve that connects the water allows for a reflection of the sky. This isn't necessarily painted on. There's one part that throws it off though, which is the small corner of no shadow near the back of the front red boat, though that might be an editing mistake because what I suspect he did is take a few shots of the boats, then take a few shots of himself in the water and edit the two together. It'd seem like an awful lot of (unnecessary) work to digitally create/retouch the ripples and shadowing in the ripples that appear near his face as convincingly as they are.

For the rest, I agree with it, the rain and blur are obvious edits but the blur doesn't detract from the photo imo.

Originally Posted by Spenner

#4: Gotta say, really awful depth of field here, and I actually am liking this photographer less by the minute, if in fact he is trying to pass these off as legit photos. The big "C" fabric to the left; how would the middle/bottom of it be sharp but the top part blurry, if it is further away from the subject? Bad attention to detail. Out of focus areas are clearly smudged looking because of a gaussian blur.

As I said earlier I doubt he is trying to pass this off as legit photos. They're posted under a fine art category. This would also explain the blurriness he added to the fabric, since an aspect of art is to keep details clear or blurry where necessary to direct the attention. How I see what he tried was that the fabric is spiraling towards the center and further away from the camera.

As for the background mountains (I'm assuming you meant this with the out of focus areas), this is entirely conform to reality as the light appears from behind the mountain top. You can still see the edge of the mountain if you follow it along. It's the natural lighting + the fog that obscures this, not a blur.

Originally Posted by Spenner

#5: Not as bad. Can't exactly tell if the rain is fake or not in this one, they're just too small. But they still feel gimmicky after seeing that other fake rain photo. The biggest downfall is something I'm not sure about, but think might've been added out of desperation: look at the "bokeh" at the bottom blurry spots in the image. Only some bokeh is present, other parts look gaussian blur'd. This means the photographer has likely brought in an out of focus photo, and blend moded over the gaussian blur to make it look more natural >_____________> really low blow if my speculation is true.

The rain is fake, but this is what I meant with how you can even argue that he's trying to pass these off as real. The head is obviously edited in because it's highly unlikely the pool of water is even that deep, so why are you worried about the blending?

Originally Posted by Spenner

#6: No reflection in water, no upper parts of the suit are wet (by nature of taking steps in such deep of water, you would have spots of the suit wet that are higher up). Balloons guassian blurry, the one that is 2nd furthest back was just lazily flipped horizontally.

Reflection in water isn't possible if the water flows turbulently (as the water does there). The suit part is pure speculation and assumption. There are definitely some water stains on the suit from where the water touches but it doesn't have to reach high up at all if the water is a gentle stream.

The balloons seem legit as they reflect the lighting that is consistent with the environment and show some of the foliage and water too in the reflection, but there are definitely a few that are copied and pasted (given the mirrored lighting on the one you mentioned).

Originally Posted by Spenner

#7: No shadow at all on the on-fire fabric onto the body. If the rope has shadowy definition, so should the body. Really nerdy here but there are jagged pixels along the edges of the body which indicate it's been cropped and they've used "Make edge" with increased contrast. You would have a slightly fuzzy pixel edge if natural.

Look again buddy, there is definitely shadow casting from the mask onto the body.
If the rope has a shadowy definition, so should the body? The body has shadow definition too though, just not the same values as the rope. Rope is also a completely different material than skin so they give off different reflections/values/colors. This argument doesn't make much sense.
Given that the smoke and fire is so well incorporated into the environment, I doubt the pixel edge was due to a crop, but more likely due to a sharpen to make it pop out more.

Originally Posted by Spenner

SO, hope I'm not bursting a bubble here, but I think this kind of photography is upright disrespectful, and should be said STRAIGHT UP if it is a composite or not. Otherwise, you're a cheating liar, who is being childish by denying the truth of your work.

The photos are listed under his fine art category, not portraits or anything else. I don't see how this is "upright disrespectful" to not mention it is composited when it's listed under fine art. A bit of rational thought would tell you this is obviously composited due to some physical impossibilities and I think the fact that you assume he is trying to cheat is a disrespectful assumption on its own. His editing is not a crime. He's using the tools at hand to what would otherwise be hard/impossible to accomplish (regardless of the editing flaws).