There is a concept called “suspension of disbelief,” which refers to the viewer’s decision to set aside the critical sense to accept something as true, no matter how implausible it may be. In other words: we know vampires don’t exist, but when we watch a movie like Twilight or a series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer we suspend our disbelief to immerse ourselves in the story and believe, for a moment, like one of the most famous graffiti on the Internet, that ‘vanpiro esiten’ (vampires exist). And this happens in cinema, theater, literature and also in photography.
In the era in which we live, in which not only retouching and photo editing but also Artificial Intelligence manage to deceive the eye and create fictitious images that could pass for real, sometimes -more and more frequently- it is difficult to distinguish whether there is a trick or not.
That is the debate that has been raised again just a few days ago at X -formerly Twitter- about a photograph by José Alberto Real Gayo in which the Four Towers of Madrid can be seen from Toledo. The snapshot, which is a few years old, already generated suspicions at the time in some users of the social network and, as if it were a groundhog day, now the same question arises again.
And although this image of Madrid seen from Toledo might seem unreal, as some point out quoting the tweet, in this case it is not necessary to suspend disbelief to take it for true: it is.
To prove it, its author, lawyer and photographer José Alberto Real Gayo, explained in detail how he had managed to capture this spectacular image.
Madrid as seen from Toledo: this is how the photo was taken
In an interview on the website Legends of Toledo real Gayo told how he had captured the photograph. And he alluded to three factors as determining factors: lens, location and atmospheric conditions.
First, the lens he used was a 600mm telephoto lens: “Telephoto lenses produce a distortion of perspective, so objects farther away appear proportionally larger than those closer,” the author explained in the interview to that page.
The chosen location is also important. In this case, the photographer chose a location between Cobisa and Argés, within the municipality of Toledo, and took the snapshot at a distance of 4.5 km from the cathedral of Toledo and 77.7 km from the Four Towers of Madrid.
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Finally, he noted that another important factor was the atmospheric conditions, which greatly influence visibility: “It is essential to be free of pollution, fog and smoke, so the ideal is just after it has rained, which is when there is the best visibility”.
In addition to photography, Real Gayo is also dedicated to video. In its web a gallery of his work, ranging from still lifes, landscapes and portraits to underwater photography, is available for viewing.
A few years ago, a similar controversy was triggered by a photograph taken by Domingo Pestana, in which it was possible to observe the Four towers of the capital from Alcalá de Henares.