Photographer admits faking widely published image

Roy Greenslade has the background on the above image:

This award-winning photograph, showing a herd of endangered Tibetan antelopes apparently undisturbed by a passing train on the controversial Qinghai-Tibet railway, has been exposed as a fake. The image was widely hailed in China as a symbol of harmonious co-existence between man and nature. But photographer Liu Wei-qiang admitted it was a fabrication after commenters on a Chinese online photography forum questioned its authenticity.
“The train was real, and so were the antelopes,” said Liu in a posting on the forum. “But the magic moment just didn’t happen even after I had waited for two weeks.” Therefore, he decided to merge together one picture of a passing train with another of the migrating animals “to raise the public awareness of antelope protection”.
The merged picture was published by more than 200 media outlets around the world and won Liu a bronze medal in the 2006 Most Influential News Photos of the Year competition, sponsored by CCTV, China’s state television. Liu has now been dismissed from the Daqing Evening News in Heilongjiang province.

  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • Fark
  • Furl
  • NewsVine
  • SphereIt
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

2 Comments

  1. Posted February 29, 2008 at 5:32 pm | Permalink

    Broadcast News.

    Date rape.

    Tears.

    One camera.

    Don’t people watch fiction?

  2. Bill Wilson
    Posted March 4, 2008 at 11:08 am | Permalink

    That photo is just too good to check.

Post a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.