ANOTHER IMAGE SEARCH CHALLENGE

[Igor]

The bare mountains and green lowland look to me like Afghanistan.
For example:



From here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Afghanistan

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It might be the edge of a lake with an island in it, rather than the bend of a river.

[Triple Zero]

I do not believe those dots are a moire. Moire's are interference patterns that also arise from things like netting, screens or any two mismatched grids, not just from scanned halftones. So you'd expect to see at least one set of the lines involved with that, but there is no visible halftone at all. If you zoom in on those dots, they look too perfectly round, as though it was a layer of dots turned mostly transparent before being overlaid on the photo.

I think the dots are a less obtrusive form of a watermark.

*zooms in*

Yes, you're absolutely right. the dots are all exactly 2x2 pixels (not round, maybe you were zooming with interpolation?), spaced at exactly the same integer pixel distances. You won't get that with moire, this is digitally added on.

It's a bit subtle for a watermark, don't you think? I mean, a professional designer wouldn't want to use something with these dots, but the type that watermarks are supposed to protect against, ones that would use an image without licensing, might not worry too much about it (plus I'm fairly sure I could shoop this off by duping into a layer layer with a mask of exactly the same dot pattern and tweaking the brightness/contrast until it matches up).

I dunno what it is, though. Probably some artifact to do with usage in Inwards Investment brochures, but it might as well be a watermark, I don't think it's too important what it exactly is. But good to know it's not a magazine scan.

Here's the zoomed picture for everyone to stare at, I used a blocky pixel zoom on purpose so that no detail got lost in interpolation:



Now I wonder, it could be the pixels, but check those cracks in the rock in the very bottom right of the image. They seem in perfect focus. Is that possible with a photograph? Both the distance features in focus and some unimportant rock barely framed in the foreground? Could this maybe be an illustration instead? (or perhaps a combo, an airbrushed/shooped picture?)

[Telarus]

I concur. It seems to be 3 images (water/lush, mountains, fore-ground). I can see very regular lines (brushstrokes with the blur tool?) along the borders (although well played with some of the treetops). Note the different light in each image (especially the water reflection.. direct reflection of the treetops, yes.. but it also bounces secondary light), and the non-overlapping of vegetation between the regions & what the light is doing to the vegetation (or lack thereof) in each image/region.

[Telarus]

HA! Look at the "standing pool" of water. It has the reflection of a tree that's not there (anymore).

[Cramulus]

We think demosquid found this picture while looking at inward investment assets, yes?

This may be helpful -
http://chartsbin.com/view/2222
- it's a map of where inward investments were happening in 2011

While this doesn't tell us where she was looking, it does tell us where she WASN'T looking.

[Cramulus]

this random stockphoto I found will look familiar to those who've been following this contest

[Juana]

I kinda love that dude.