Way way way way way too much image processing.
Good grief, is reality really that shitty?
Good grief, is reality really that shitty?
These pictures don't have bad HDR artifacts (EG haloing) but even a casual observer will notice they don't feel natural at all. It's a shame because the framing and colors of those pictures are really nice, but the contrast (both high and low freq) gives them a completely synthetic feel. I'm guessing the sky was swapped out with a very dramatic overcast version, which also adds to the uncanny valley effect.
Part of the article stipulates that much of the plane is still classified to a certain extent, it could be possible that there were requirements to not show too much detail. That would lend to the highly stylized look to being used. I'd have assumed some photoshopping to paint over areas that needed redacting.
What processing are you referring to?
an example of the postprocessing can be seen in the first photo, where the yellow painted flight line is glowing in the dark
Especially in the ground pictures, a lot of work was done on the global/local contrast to achieve detail across the brightness range. In addition, manually brightening and darkening some of the areas to guide the eye. These are things photographers have always done since the early days of photography - however with modern tools, it's easier to achieve a look that goes too far, and starts coming off as "synthetic" or "video-gamey".
I also think they just did a swap of the sky in some of the dramatic cloudy shots.