No, this is not National Geographic’s ‘Picture of the Year’

This Facebook post shows a photo of a shark jumping out of the ocean.

The caption claims the image was “National Geographic Photo of the Year” but does not provide the name of the photographer or any details of when and where the image was shot.

The post has been shared hundreds of times.

National Geographic said the shark photo had not won any prizes from the magazine.

“This image is not a National Geographic image,” Chandler Hueth from National Geographic’s Global Communications department told AFP.

A reverse image search found the picture came from the ShutterStock page of Alexyz3d who is described as a photographer, illustrator, vector artist, videographer, and a 3D artist.

The original caption on the image, which is described as a stock illustration, says: “Shark jumps out of the water”. The picture is tagged with terms including CG (computer graphics) FX (effects) and 3D.

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Screenshot of image on Shutterstock

Earlier versions of the image circulated online had falsely claimed it was taken by a National Geographic photographer named Bob Burton.

National Geographic said in 2016 that Bob Burton did not work for the magazine, had not won a prize, and that the shark photo was "clearly fake".

“When a man on Twitter claimed to be National Geographic's chief photographer, several photo editors at the magazine assembled to discuss. ‘Have you ever heard of this guy?’ None had,” Daniel Stone, an editor at National Geographic magazine, wrote in the magazine's rebuttal of the original viral claims.

“The man, who goes by the alias Bob Burton, claimed (falsely) to have taken National Geographic's photo of the year (an award we don't have) of a shark leaping out of the water (which is clearly fake). But none of those erroneous details seemed to matter as the image made the rounds of social media to enthusiastic reviews,” Stone wrote.

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Screenshot of NatGeo story