Bob Schwartz

Are these photos “real”?

Sometimes our discussions these days sound less like analysis by scientists and philosophers and more like a bunch of people sitting around stoned and asking “What is reality, man?”

In this case, that is the moon and those are clouds and the sun was setting (though the moon was not rising and the sun was not setting; the earth was turning). The light fell on a camera sensor and the data was recorded on a memory card. I know all this because I was there and experienced it.

And yet if you or I asked an AI image generator to create this exact picture, or something close, it could. In fact, if you thought the cloud formations were not quite right or if you wanted more and different colors than the sunset created, you could get that.

So what is reality, man?

A great question. And an amazing sky.

© 2025 by Bob Schwartz