Did Fake Photos Skew Georgian War Coverage?

Several blogs are reporting that images by wire-service photographers from the conflict between Russia and Georgia were staged. The faked pictures, the blogs contend, helped spread pro-Georgian propaganda.
      The images in question were made by Reuters photographers David Mdzinarishvili and Gleb Garanich, as well as George Abdaladze of Associated Press.
      Certain details in the images have spurred the speculation. For instance, the same grieving Georgian man appears in several separate series of pictures. Reuters has released a statement denying the charges. Go here to read more.--David Schonauer

Best Doctored Photos of All Time?

Here's a fun roundup of the "best" doctored photos of all time from Telegraph Online. The story shows that for as long as there has been photography, there have been people who want to mess with pictures to make the unreal look very real. There are some recent examples no doubt done with Photoshop and made popular on the Internet--the images of the tourist atop the World Trade Center as a jet approaches, for example. But the practice goes way back. Chairman Mao erases political enemies from photos (and sometimes from the earth itself). And in 1917 two young English girls doctored photos and convinced many adults that fairies really existed.--David Schonauer

Photo Evidence of End of World...Be Afraid

Have you noticed that throughout 2008 the news media (old and new alike) have been dishing up a veritable freak show for our enjoyment? Every day seems to bring news of eerie monsters washed up on beaches, pregnant men, blood-sucking beasts, and of course the best of all, Bigfoot. I thought we were over all that Y2K millennium end-times stuff after terrorists gave us something real to worry about in 2001. But, hey, they made a new "X-Files" movie, so things may not be as serene in the universe as I thought.
     None of these stories would be interesting at all if they didn't include pictures for us to wonder at. The photos, it goes without saying, are satisfyingly gruesome, all fur and fangs and mortal decay. Once, you had to swallow your pride and buy "News of the World" to see images like this. That grimy tabloid is now gone, but the Internet, CNN, and FOX have stepped up to the plate with offerings like the following:

   

Dane Cook Comments on Photoshopped Poster

Comic Dane Cook has a new movie coming out, but he isn't happy with the poster, as he makes clear on his personal blog. I hate bad photoshopping, and Cook's comments are pretty funny:

1. Graphics:
Whoever photoshopped our poster must have done so at taser point with
3 minutes to fulfill their hostage takers deranged obligations. They should have called Donnie Hoyle and had him give a tutorial using "You Suck at Photoshop" templates. This is so glossy it makes Entertainment Weekly look wooden.

2. My head:
The left side of my face seems to be melting off of my skull. I guess I am looking directly into the Ark of the Covenant? Are they going for the bells palsy thing here? My left side looks like Brittany Spears' vagina.

3. The Stare.
My character apparently has fallen in love with a strand of Kate Hudsons hair. Kate's mannequin is desperately in love with the inside of my right ear while Jason is half stunned, half corsage.

4. Lips:
It looks like I'm wearing Maybelline Water Shine Diamonds Liquid Lipstick. My characters name is now Winter Solstice and I'm a hooker with a heart of gold. Jason is my floral carrying pimp, while Kate is my first trick!

5. Fashion:
My character is sporting a very high collar I mean damn they should be snow capped at that altitude. It's going for the vampire lurking in the castle basement vibe. An Olympic pole vaulter would have a tough go clearing that collar. I'm also able to turn my head comfortably 180 degrees, because I was raised in an abandoned barn by a family of owls.

Go here to read his entire post. Nah, I probably won't see this movie, either.--David Schonauer

 

Annals of Philosophy: Mirrors and Photography

There is an interesting story about mirrors in the science section of today’s New York Times, and when I read it I couldn’t help but think about the relationship, or maybe I should say similarities, between mirrors and photographs.
     I wouldn’t be the first person to equate photos with mirrors. There must be a hundred photo books and exhibitions that have the word “mirror” in the title. The most famous was the landmark 1978 show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, “Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960,” in which curator John Szarkowski brought the world up to date on a medium that was only beginning to be considered a fine art. As critic Robert Hughes wrote at the time, Szarkowski showed that photography was no longer simply a medium for “witnessing public events.” Szarkowski recognized that photography had become the way we now perceived reality itself. It didn’t capture reality so much as reflect it back in some interesting and perplexing ways, as mirrors do.
      That’s why I was intrigued by the piece about mirrors in the Times. I didn’t realize how perplexing or misleading a reflected image could be. There are lessons in the article that anyone interested in photography—especially the metaphorically inclined—can take to heart.

AFP Distributes Missile Photo Doctored by Iran

That scary photo of the Iranian missile test that ran on front pages everywhere were faked, according to this analysis. The image that appeared in newspapers soon after news broke about the troublesome tests showed four missiles blasting skyward. The image, distributed by Agence France Presse, was obtained from the website of Sepah News, the PR arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Later, a nearly identical image showing only three missiles was released.
    It would seem that the Iranian news agency doctored the image, cloning a missile and exhaust from other parts of the image. AFP retracted the four-missile version.
    Why would Iran add the extra missile? Perhaps President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  felt  that three missiles were sufficiently terrorizing.  (From  what I've heard, the new missiles are essentially  updates of the old Scuds and don't represent a great leap forward in killing technology.) --David Schonauer

Fox News Alters Photos of Enemy Reporters

According to Media Matters, Fox News is getting even with its perceived enemies by altering their pictures to make them look rather monstrous, then airing the results.
     The website says the images were shown on Fox & Friends. The program’s host, Steve Doocy, was commenting on a recent article in the New York Times that said Fox News’s ratings were showing an “ominous” decline. Doocy called the story's writer, Jacques Steinberg, an “attack dog.” Also singled out was Times editor Steven Reddicliffe.
     During the commentary, the news channel showed photos of both men. The pictures (that's Steinberg above and Reddicliffe below) seem to have been altered from the original shots. Teeth were yellowed, noses made bigger, hairlines pushed back, dark circles added under the eyes—and not with a great deal of Photoshop craft, it seems to me.
     Don’t they have someone at Fox who could have done this with a little more skill?
      I happen to know Reddicliffe—he lives in the suburb I do, and I see him on my commuter train all the time. In real life, he doesn’t look like an opium eater at all. He’s a very nice guy.
     If you’ve seen Fox & Friends you know that Doocy is just a tool. The best-case scenario here is that Fox thought this was a clever joke. Clever? I don't think so. The only joke here is Fox News itself, the media home of Karl Rove. News organizations have no business messing with pictures.—David Schonauer

This Strange Device Can’t Be a Good Thing

What you see here is the Image Fulgurator, a new, strange device that frankly scares me. It is the invention of a German man named—and you can’t make this stuff us—Julius von Bismark. The contraption is designed so that one person can project “stealth” images into another person’s photographs—images that can only be seen when the other person looks at his pictures. How can something like this be good? Why would anyone invent it?
    The heart of the Fulgurator (Von Bismark says it mean “Flash Thrower”) is an old manual Minolta SLR. A flashgun, mounted at the back, fires through the camera and through a transparency image on a roll of processed film inside. That image is then projected out through the lens and onto any surface.
    The flashgun is triggered when another photographer standing nearby takes a picture using flash. Like a slave unit, the Fulgurator senses that flash and fires its own flash, projecting an image the other photographer’s camera records. The image is projected so briefly, however, that the other photographer won’t see it.
     As this story points out, Fulgurator is simply a machine that allows a kind of analog hacking into other people’s pictures. Von Bismark seems to believe it might be used in viral marketing and advertising. Maybe I’m just cranky, but I think the whole idea of this is obnoxious. –David Schonauer

Question of the Day: Should Retouchers Get Photo Credits?

Yesterday I bumped into the inimitable Laurie Kratochvil, photo editor par excellence, who told me to make sure and read the profile of digital retoucher Pascal Dangin in this week’s issue of The New Yorker
   The profile is interesting, in the thoughtful, thorough, and long way that New Yorker articles tend to be. But it raises some important points about the art of photography now.
     Dangin is the owner and resident genius of Box Studios in New York, the place where lots of big fashion photographers, magazines, and advertisers get their images perfected for print. “His success lies…in his ability to marry technical prowess to an aesthetic sensibility: his clients are paying for his eye, and his mind, as much as for his hand,” writes the article’s author, Lauren Collins.
     At this point I think we’re all aware of how important retouchers have become to the photographic process. Often, as the article points out, it is Dangin who creates a successful image by altering the work a photographer has already done.
     So I have a question I’d like to put out into the world: Should retouchers like Dangin be given photo credits when their work results in something useful? If it truly is his artistry that makes an image work, shouldn’t we know that? Of course that might upset lots of photographers. But what do you think?
     (Above: A photo of Dangin for the New Yorker by Josef Astor. I don’t know if it was retouched.)—David Schonauer

Flickr Superstar Profiled in Times Magazine

I’ve been keeping a secret for a while now, and it’s time I just let it out, so here goes: I totally don’t follow the whole Flickr thing. I check out images there from time to time, but I don’t know who the big stars and major personalities are. By now I should be an upstanding member of the Flickr community, since I write about photography, but instead I spend all my spare time working.
    So I was really interested in a piece in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine by Vigrinia Heffernan about Rebekka Guoleifsdottir, describes as “one of Flickr’s most popular photographers.
    The point of the story was that some savvy photographers have learned how to perfect a “Flickr style”—images that look good in thumbnail form, with fulsome digital manipulation—and how to work the social networking aspect of the site to make herself more popular.
     As the piece points out, Guoleifsdottir, who lives in Iceland, isn’t shy about posting images of herself (above, for example). She eventually became so popular on Flickr that she was hired to do a Toyota ad campaign.
      I’d be interested in hearing from Flickr members if they believe there is particular style of photography that defines a new aesthetic. Do film images really get shouted down because they seem out of focus? Is it wrong to game the Flickr system in order to become popular? (Analog artists have been doing that forever.)–David Schonauer