ego.istic.org

Those who followed me here from the POV-Ray newsgroups may be mildly amused to learn that one of the products my current employer makes and sells has been used a few times to render design and publicity ‘photographs’ of Rolex watches.

Everyone else, though, will now need an explanation. The in-joke dates back to this thread, started by a poster who ostensibly wanted to show off his artwork. In fact the chap was making false claims, and in all probability wasn't even the author of the image he posted.

But he has still achieved a kind of fame. Nearly ten years later, “AWSOME ROLEX,” or some more creative misspelling of the same phrase, is still used by POV-Ray users to mean that an image is or looks faked: a photograph set up to look like a render, or an appropriated render of a scene created by someone other than the person claiming to be, or done by a different technique to that claimed. It's even used sometimes to express praise, that an image is so photorealistic it's hard to believe the author is on the level and that it's genuinely not a photograph.

The use of the term “fake,” as above, to describe an image that is really a photograph of a real object, purporting to be an image generated by artifice without the participation real objects, is particularly interesting. That the name of Rolex, perhaps the brand most well-known for being counterfeited, should come to be used in this community as a byword both for fakeness and realism, is just as interesting a turn of events. These two interesting outcomes turn out to be more related than this, in that the notion of a fake fake Rolex is one that predates computer graphics: sellers of counterfeits of brands like Rolex watches have been known to convince the unwary consumer into making a purchase by showing them a real Rolex watch, claiming it is one of the fakes, to show how much like a real Rolex it is. Perhaps I should be sad or angry that the practice has persisted into this new medium, but I am too busy wondering at how things turn out.

Anyway, when I learned that I was working on software for creating genuine fake photographs of genuine Rolex watches, I chuckled to myself at this reminder of my earlier days in computer graphics.