(1) As already answered by others, EXIF and other related info are easily removed, if they were at all recorded in the first place

(2) Far. You can see it from the mazing artifacts in the out-of-focus regions.

(3) There seems to be a load of light in these pictures. After all, they were taken on a beach, in the middle of the day, presumably in the summer. With a large aperture (see point 4), the exposure time will be very small. Also, nothing excludes that the photographer was using a tripod or was maybe lying down or somehow supporting the camera.

(4) Large aperture. This causes the focus to be only on one plane (that of the woman, in this case). It also increases the amount of light getting in the camera, which decreases the exposure time (see point 3). Also, a good-quality entry-level (that is, very basic) lens costs about £3000. The camera body (again, entry level), is another £3000. Stuff that costs £100 is a toy.

(5) This can only be answered by the photographer. Who knows? Maybe she went away. Maybe someone noticed him and started chasing him. Maybe he didn't want to. Who knows?

(6) See point 4.

Photoshopped
 

Contrast, colour and shades are different from the person in comparison to the beach and rock formats ... that's why.

They aren't fake and are taken by someone who has taken many many pics

I have most archived somewhere

I rest my case .... I'm not the one in search of unanswered questions.

The only thing I do in a case like this is opening the file in Photoshop and do some tests ... I'm not an expert but know my way around that works for me most of the time.

Long lens, guessing 400-500 mm.
Short exposure time to minimize the chance of shake. Rule of thumb is max exposure time = lens mm. eg., no slower than 1/400 for a 400 mm lens.
Could be much faster here with the bright sun.
Probably a large aperture to get enough light for the fast exposure.
Large aperture plus fast exposure = shallow depth of field = bokeh, the background blurring.
Could be a 45 or 60 MP sensor for the details even when cropped.
Could be on a mono- or tripod.
Exif is easy enough to delete in PS or LR when exporting to jpg.

Looking at these formulas, it may not be possible for basic users like me to take stunning pics.

By the way, as one more rule of thumb, longer lenses tend to have a smaller maximum aperture, which means that if you want a longer lens but keep a large aperture, you have to spend more, and sometimes considerably so, depending on the quality.

I've looked back on old external drives.

I have folders, from ILTB, numbered 04 and up. These early folders have date modified data suggesting the image was created on a computer in May 2009. That, I suspect, was the date I downloaded the folders from the website. The images would be earlier than that.

Fifteen years ago i am not sure how many people had access to Photoshop. I seem to recall it was expensive and used primarily by professionals.

What we dont know is how many images were taken by EuroGuru and Cliffhanger to produce the crystal clear images we are familiar with.

It seems that the photographer was in a number of locations, sometimes on the beach, sometimes in the rocks and I think sometimes maybe on a boat.

I regularly used to visit the iltb site for updates and I noticed these pics appeared in the year 2014. Now I am surprised to here the pics are taken before 2009!

I was in Formentera some time ago....but i couldn't find this location/place.. 😥 🤔💭 I did careful search :D