Tag Archives: photo manipulation

Sexing up the fall foliage

October 19, 2009 – 8:00 am

apAn Associated Press image of fall foliage amid snow in Twin Mountain, N.H., published in Thursday’s Photos of the Day had been digitally altered by the photo service. The photo has been replaced with the actual, unaltered image. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Wire service | Also tagged | Comments

South Shore Press takes heat over doctored photo; paper defends manipulation

July 28, 2009 – 8:00 am

A New York newspaper is in trouble with local politicians and other members of the community after it took two photos and combined them without telling readers. Here’s the photo:

doctored

A report from the Southampton Press:

The photograph depicts Brookhaven Town Councilman Keith Romaine as being present at a July 2 news conference at Smith Point County Park that he did not, in fact, attend. It appeared in the July 8 issue of The South Shore Press, a weekly newspaper serving the Tri-Hamlet community.

The original photograph was distributed with a press release issued by Suffolk County Legislator Kate Browning’s office shortly after the press conference, at which county and town officials, including Brookhaven Supervisor Mark Lesko, announced that they had reached a deal to replace and maintain missing buoys directing boaters from the Smith Point Marina to the Great South Bay.

A reprinted version of the press release also was published in The South Shore Press, although it was altered to add Mr. Romaine’s name twice to the article, depicting him as being present at the press conference and helping to broker the deal with Ms. Browning and Mr. Lesko. The photograph was retouched to include an image of Mr. Romaine, as if he were present when the photo at the press conference was taken.

Both Ms. Browning and Mr. Lesko said this week that Mr. Romaine did not contribute to the settlement…

The newspaper’s director of sales and marketing, Fred Towle Jr., a former Suffolk County legislator who resigned from his county post in 2003 after pleading guilty to receiving bribes in office, acknowledged this week that the paper altered the photograph. He defended the practice, noting that he had received competing press releases and photographs from both Mr. Romaine and Ms. Browning and was attempting to combine the two.

He said he saw nothing wrong with adding Mr. Romaine to the photograph. “Yes, we did it,” he said. “It’s not like we intentionally removed someone from a photo—that would have been questionable.”

Uh, wrong. The story includes quotes from ethics experts:

According to the code of ethics formulated by the Society for Professional Journalists, a not-for-profit organization that according to its website is “dedicated to encouraging the free practice of journalism and stimulating high standards of ethical behavior,” one of the primary ethical standards for journalists is to “seek truth and report it.”

In that mission, The South Shore Press appears to have failed, according to Andy Schotz, chairman of the organization’s ethics committee.

“My breath was taken away when it was described to me,” Mr. Schotz said of the photograph. “You might have good intention, but we’re after truth. If it didn’t happen, you’re not reporting truth.”

He said that while many publications print photo illustrations in an attempt to make a story more clear, they typically take great pains to make it clear to the reader that it was not an actual photograph.

“Your responsibility is to the readers,” he said. “You don’t try to confuse your readers, you go out of your way to explain everything to your readers. There’s a trust relationship. The role that we have is to collect facts … people have faith in that and they rely on that.”

Jim Klurfeld, a visiting professor of journalism at Stony Brook University who served as the editorial page editor for Newsday for 40 years, agreed.

“If you’re going to print something for artistic reasons, it has to be labeled a photo illustration,” he said, recalling a time when Newsday editors took heat for a front-cover shot of Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding on a skating rink together, an event that never actually occurred. “If there’s any confusion, you can’t use it. The only thing you have in a newspaper is your credibility. Why else would you read a newspaper if it’s not to get accurate information, the truth?”

Thanks, Steve!

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers | Also tagged , | Comments

Photog working for NY Times Mag accused of manipulating images UPDATE: NY Times confirms manipulations

July 8, 2009 – 4:17 pm

nytimesmag(See update at the bottom of this post.)

A photographer whose work appeared in the New York Times Magazine has been accused of digitally manipulating his images. Edgar Martins produced a photo essay entitled "Ruins of the Second Gilded Age." It showed abandoned buildings/construction projects and was featured in the magazine and on the Times website. After commenters on MetaFilter raised questions about the authenticity of the images, the magazine pulled the slideshow from the website and inserted this text in its place:

Editors’ Note: July 7, 2009
The pictures in this feature were removed after questions were raised about whether they had been digitally altered.

Adam Gurno, a MetaFilter user, is being given credit for helping expose the manipulations. He’s posted some evidence on his personal website and also did an interview with Minnesota Public Radio:

"It was an excellent photo essay," he told me this afternoon. "The picture of the framing is actually pretty striking. I looked at it and I said, ‘this doesn’t look right.’"

Gurno says he sent his proof to the Times but he only got a form e-mail in return. Nonetheless, the Times has removed the photo essay from its Web site.

How the ethical lapse came to light should be a warning to all journalists.

"When you work in computer programming…there’s a maxim in the programming world that says ‘all bugs are shallow to 10,000 eyes.’ It means if you have something open source and you let 10,000 people look at it, they’re going to find all the little things about it. Everybody’s going to approach it from a slightly different angle. And I think it’s the same with this picture," he said.

"I understand magazines Photoshop models on their covers and that’s neither here nor there. But when they actually call it ‘journalism,’ that’s when I decided to dig in a little bit extra," he said.

Gawker notes that Photo District News claims to have uncovered other examples of manipulation within the same photo essay. PDN also reprinted the text from the magazine that introduced the essay. Note the emphasis from PDN:

Last fall, The New York Times Magazine commissioned Edgar Martins, a 32-year-old Portuguese photographer based in London, to capture on film the physical evidence of the real estate bust in the United States. Martins, who creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation, traveled from rural Georgia to suburban California, visiting large construction projects that began during the speculative boom years and then came to a sudden halt, often half-finished, when the housing and securities markets collapsed.

Other media watchdogs are trying to get an official comment from the Times.

My guess is the magazine is examining the photos and talking with the photographer, and that it will publish a more detailed Editors’ Note once it makes a final determination. At this point the general consensus seems to be that the photos were altered, but the magazine and photographer have yet to confirm this. Either way, they should move quickly to make a more detailed statement. The story has already taken shape and doesn’t look good for the magazine.

UPDATE July 9: The Times has acknowledged that the images were altered by the photographer. As expected, here’s the Editors’ Note:

A picture essay in The Times Magazine on Sunday and an expanded slide show on NYTimes.com titled “Ruins of the Second Gilded Age” showed large housing construction projects across the United States that came to a halt, often half-finished, when the housing market collapsed. The introduction said that the photographer, a freelancer based in Bedford, England, “creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation.”

A reader, however, discovered on close examination that one of the pictures was digitally altered, apparently for aesthetic reasons. Editors later confronted the photographer and determined that most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show. Had the editors known that the photographs had been digitally manipulated, they would not have published the picture essay, which has been removed from NYTimes.com.

And a post on its Lens blog offers this admission, in addition to other background:

A picture essay in The Times Magazine on Sunday and an accompanying slide show on NYTimes.com, “Ruins of the Second Gilded Age,” have been found to include digital alterations. The photos showed unfinished or unoccupied construction projects around the United States that came to a halt — at least in part — because of the financial crisis. They were taken by Edgar Martins, a 32-year-old freelance photographer.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Magazines, Major Errors | Also tagged , | Comments

Apology

November 19, 2008 – 8:00 am

In our edition of October 29, The Melbourne Times front cover was a digitally altered photograph depicting an aeroplane flying towards the Rialto Towers. The picture used was not an actual photograph of an aeroplane in the vicinity of any building, but rather, an image that had been digitally altered. Normally, when digitally altered pictures are used, The Melbourne Times acknowledges this. This time, a production error meant the acknowledgement did not appear. The Melbourne Times also accepts that the image may have caused some distress or anxiety among readers who may have assumed that the Rialto Towers had been, or were likely to be, the subject of a terrorist attack. This is not true. The Melbourne Times apologises for any distress that use of the image may have caused. The image will not be used again.

Thanks, Kevin!

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Also tagged , | Comments

Because he was so unattractive to begin with

October 17, 2008 – 8:00 am

A picture on Monday with the continuation of a front-page article about Senator John McCain and his 1999 memoir, “Faith of My Fathers,” was published in error. The photograph, of Marlon Brando, whose characters were an inspiration to the young Mr. McCain, was digitally altered. The alterations were made last week when the picture was used as part of a “before and after” illustration for an article on nytimes.com about a software program that can create a supposedly more attractive face. The “before” picture of Mr. Brando was supposed to have been used with the McCain article. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Also tagged | Comments

The Iran photo manipulation corrections

July 14, 2008 – 8:00 am

As you’re no doubt aware, a photograph purporting to show the successful test firing of four missiles by Iran was revealed to have been manipulated. In fact, only three missiles were successfully fired. The image, provided by the Iranian government, was distributed by Agence-France Presse and used by many media outlets. You can view some front pages here.
Photo District News published a good story on Thursday, the day the photo was exposed:

…Photo editors in the U.S. variously blamed themselves and AFP, a respected photo agency, for not catching the photo.
“AFP should have caught it, really,” says Tim Rasmussen, assistant managing editor for photography at the Denver Post, which ran the photo on A1. “It should never have gotten past them.”
But another Post editor was miffed that he failed to catch it. “Oh, I hate days like this,” said Ken Lyons, the paper’s front-page photo editor. “It was right there in front of me. I should have seen it.” …
Catching some of the heat Thursday was Getty Images, which distributes AFP in the U.S. Getty director of photography Pancho Bernasconi says the AFP content arrives through an automatic feed and Getty does not edit it.
Some newspapers made it clear in their captions or credit lines that the photo was provided by the Iranian government. Others did not. The Denver Post ran the image as its lead art and credited it to AFP/Getty; the Baltimore Sun ran the photo on page 1 and credited it to Agence France Presse.
Early Thursday on the East Coast, more than 12 hours after the AFP image had been distributed, the Associated Press moved a nearly identical photo showing three missiles. It appears to have been photographed a fraction of a second apart from the AFP image. In a news story, the AP said it obtained the photo from the same Iranian Web site from which the AFP obtained theirs.
The first person to call foul on the photo appears to have been the political blog Little Green Footballs, which spotted the manipulation Wednesday. It took until Thursday for word to spread widely through sites like The Drudge Report and The New York Times. The AFP correction ran shortly after 9 a.m. Thursday on the East Coast.

UPDATE July 17: A reader wrote in to note that militaryphotos.net, not Little Green Footballs, was the first “to call foul” on the photo. You can read the post here. Thanks, Dominik!

And here are the corrections I’ve seen thus far (AFP corrected/retracted its image on Thursday):

On Page 1 Thursday, a photo released by the Iranian government accompanying a story about Iran’s test-firing of missiles was apparently digitally manipulated to include four missiles. Another image was released Thursday that shows three missiles. A story about the photo appears on Page 12. Link

A photograph of the test firing of missiles released by the public relations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Sepah News, which ran on the front page of yesterday’s editions of The Sun had been digitally altered. The Sun was unaware of this manipulation. The photograph above is the correct image, which shows one missile remaining in the launcher. Link

Iran missile test: A photo from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard that accompanied an article in Thursday’s Section A about the country’s test of medium- and long-range missiles apparently was digitally altered to show four missiles successfully launching. It later became clear that the original photo showed only three rockets. News coverage on A1 and A4. Link

A related correction:

In some broadcasts, we did not note that the Web site Little Green Footballs had posted an item Wednesday evening declaring that the photograph of the Iranian missile launch had been doctored — before The New York Times published its analysis Thursday morning. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Fabrication, Government, Major Errors, Newspapers, Radio, Wire service | Also tagged , , , | Comments

Slate backtracks on questions about Cruise/von Stauffenberg photos

June 30, 2008 – 8:00 am

A June 17 “Hollywoodland” raised questions about a photograph of Claus von Stauffenberg that appeared in a United Artists promotional campaign for the movie Valkyrie. The piece pointed out that the photo UA used looked more like Tom Cruise, the star of the film, than a similar-looking AP photo of von Stauffenberg. Because of insufficient photo research by Slate’s editors, we failed to discover another archival image of von Stauffenberg, which appears to be the one UA used in its publicity campaign. As a result of this mistake, the question the piece raised—whether the photo had been doctored in an effort to make Claus von Stauffenberg look more like Tom Cruise—was unwarranted. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Online | Also tagged , | Comments

Fun with photos

November 14, 2007 – 8:00 am

Two photos of a Menlo Park house in the Nov. 4 Chronicle Magazine were modified by the source, without the paper’s knowledge, to eliminate solar panels from the roof. The Chronicle’s policy is that photographs should represent reality precisely and accurately. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Also tagged , | Comments