This spectacular photo of an iceberg above and below the water is a fake.

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A visitor wrote: “I stumbled onto your page looking up UFO hoaxes and I found it to be very interesting. I was surprised to see that the monster iceberg photo was a fake. I was so astonished when I saw it for the first time.”

Full view of iceberg

This spectacular picture of a monster iceberg has been circulating all over the world in emails that claim it is a genuine photograph.

It allegedly shows an iceberg floating on the ocean and at the same time allows us to see what icebergs look like below the water.

But a different story appears on the Truth or Fiction website. The photographer, Ralph A. Clevenger, says he created it from a composite of four images.

He says: “I created the image as a way of illustrating the concept of what you get is not necessarily what you see. As a professional photographer I knew that I couldn't get an actual shot of an iceberg the way I envisioned it, so I created the final image by compositing several images I had taken.”

Digital artists can create exceptionally real-looking fake photos quickly in Photoshop and other graphics programs. Many of the photos in our website's DinosaurCam section have been shown to be fakes, such as the extinct pteranodon hovering over a South African waterhole, the tourist on the observation deck at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and the huge dinosaur trundling through a jungle village.

Ralph Clevenger says the halves of his iceberg are two separate photos of two different icebergs. One was in Alaska and the other was in Antarctica. He didn't take either of the shots underwater.

“The only underwater part is the background taken off the coast of California. The sky is the last component. It took a lot of research on lighting and scale to get the berg to look real.”

Image copyright Corbis Corporation. Used under license.