To be clear, I have no idea what I am talking about on subjects such as this. You might think the picture above is a painting and one with amazing detail and texture. Others may recognize this as a photograph taken by some superhuman talent dangling over the edge of a boat.
Most of us wonder about scenes like this - when reality runs smack up against imagination.
I'm a pretty simple person. I think of photographs as snippets of time; an absolute record of the eye. Unless it is photo-shopped to death, it is what it is. A painting, on the other had, isn't painted in an instant so the scene in the "mind's eye" is more of an average of a whole lot of views - a distillation of a scene over time. Obviously those who paint from a photograph or on the subject of a statute are the exception but you get what I mean.I'm drawn to impressionism and this super-reality technique as my matters of taste. Mostly, I'm also drawn to magicians who perform at a level I can hardly imagine. This is magic no matter how you look at it.