This Frozen Elephant Mountain photo is a digitally created artwork, not a real one - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
July 2, 2021
A photo is being shared on social media claiming it as the true visuals of a frozen elephant mountain. Earlier this year, the same photo was shared as the visuals of winter elephant rock in Oregon. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Photo of a giant frozen elephant mountain.
Fact: The photo shows an artwork created by a Polish-based artist, Mirekis. Mirekis created this image by combining different images available on the internet. It is not a real photo. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, a similar photo was found to be shared by a Facebook user in May 2021. This Facebook user credited the photo to ‘@mirekis7’. Mirekis is a Polish-based artist who creates artworks of giant creatures and portraits. The same photo was found on the Facebook and Instagram handles of Merikis. They can be seen here and here.  The official portfolio of Merkis can be seen here.
Mirekis had shared similar digital artworks of frozen cliffs on his social media handles. They can be seen here, here and here. Several websites have published these digitally created artworks of Mirekis.
Regarding this giant elephant mountain artwork, Merkis issued a clarification to the ‘Snopes’ fact-checking website. While speaking to ‘Snopes’, Merkis revealed the making process of his artwork. Merkis said that he had created this image by combining several different images available on the internet. The foreground of the artwork was reportedly taken from a photograph of Rocca Malatestiana, a fortress on a mountain range in Italy. Similarly, Merkis used another two images available on the ‘Pixabay’ website to create this artwork. They can be seen here and here. The clarification issued by Merkis could be found in the fact-check article published by ‘Snopes’. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the image shared in the post is a digitally created artwork.
To sum it up, a digitally created artwork is shared as true visuals of a Frozen Elephant Mountain.