Fake is not the four letter word you were looking for…

On Christmas Day we went to the South Devon fishing town of Brixham. It was a beautiful day so we decided to go there early, which, for us, means arriving at 11am. I’ve covered in my previous post the amazing sighting of Common Dolphins we had. What I didn’t expect was the number of accusations of fakery that my photo would get.

Some of the comments were lovely and thoughtful:

Thanks for that, Wendy. It truly was.

I couldn’t agree more, David. Thank you. It was a privilege to be there.

Then the backlash started. First to pile in on the fakery feeding frenzy was:

Photoshop? I hadn’t used Photoshop, I’d used Lightroom, and then only to adjust the highlights and shadows. That stops the sky being horribly burnt-out and the scenery being far too dark, you know, like on the cover photo here.

I’d then cropped the photo to a portrait format rather than landscape so it had a better overall balance.

Why would someone think it was fake?

Next was:

As it been, Linda? As it? The verb ‘to ave’?

No, it hasn’t been added Linda. It’s a photograph of what I saw. Exactly what I saw.

The dolphin’s too sharp? The background’s blurred because it’s far away. The dolphin’s sharp because it’s in focus. That’s exactly what I wanted


Someone called Naomi did come to my defence:

“…the light is opposite side of dolphin not in front.”? Would you have preferred a silhouette Linda?

Then another one, from a man with a big lens in his silhouette:

So do comments on Facebook, Steve, especially when they’re as enigmatic as your profile picture.

I checked and Steve is a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Photography. His profile doesn’t say where from. Maybe avoid that university?

I didn’t respond and Steve appears to have blocked me on Facebook. I wonder why that could be? Trolls always find it difficult when you don’t respond.

Then a final amusing one arrived:

“It’s the wrong time of day”? It was four o’clock in the afternoon. “Too much cloud”? It was cloudy by then, what can I say? “Virtually clear evening skies”? Did you have a 360 degree view? In fact, you weren’t even there Roger, were you? You were in that armchair with your dog, weren’t you?

You know that the moon landings were real, right? And the Earth is round? And 9/11 was a terrorist attack? Vaccination has saved millions of lives? COVID -19 isn’t caused by 5G?


Fake isn’t the four letter word you they were all looking for. It was envy.

Fake is not the four letter word you were looking for

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