It’s always the little details that make these images impressive … anyone can just cut and paste an object into an image and it doesn’t look real
But add in details like lighting, shadows, smoke, mist, water, reflections … and you make all those shadows and reflections plausible and at the appropriate angles … very subtle additions and it makes it very convincing.
Oh neat, I think I’ll go over to this magAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZZZINNNNNNNNNNNE!!!