On photographic fraud: fauxtography

August 9, 2006: an overview of reuters fauxtography, discovered so far -  I did not directly refer to or rip off this post, although while hashing this post out, I recalled that a similar categorization might have been made already, and in fact ran across this post once again during my search for example pictures.

Here is how I would arrange the four categories of fraud.

Class I: Misleading Presentation

The first class of fraudulent photography involves the use of authentic pictures in a misleading presentation.  Take an old picture, put a new caption on it and stick it next to an article on a current event.  Or take a closely cropped picture of a few people at a demonstration and inflate their numbers.  Maybe there aren’t any good pictures out yet, of the rubble and devastation of the current war, so it might seem like a good idea to lift some images of the previous one.  The dishonesty here is in presenting authentic pictures as something other than what they are.

Class II: Digitally Manipulated Photography

The second class of fraudulent photography involves pictures that have been altered; they would have taken expert work with an airbrush in days past, now any idiot with Photoshop can have a go at it.

What disturbs me about this is that in some of these cases, such as the infamous smoke over Beirut picture, the fraud was caught due to some highly obvious uses of the ‘clone brush’.  In other words, had the work not been so amateurish it might have passed public examination for perhaps a few more days.  It is disturbing because it is not at all outside the realm of possibility that next time, the bad guys will make sure they hire people with advanced computer graphics skill.

Often the press agency will defend some of these pictures as ‘part of our perfectly normal procedure for adjusting contrast and removing specks of dust’.   But while some contrast enhancement and dust removal is certainly legitimate, here’s a tip: if the result is that you make white smoke look like brown smoke, or gray smoke look like black smoke, you’re going to get called on it.  Because different colors of smoke indicate different things.

2006 - Adnan Hajj decides his picture of Beirut needs more smoke than appeared in real life. Reuters buys it.

CBC photo of Toronto, original.

Same CBC photo of Toronto, somewhat cropped, somehow a lot more brown, as if the city were being choked by nasty pollution. Except the color shift is completely someone taking artistic license.

Class III: Staged Photography

The third class of fraudulent photography involves the use of “real pictures” of staged events.  The pictures are real in that there is no manipulation of the picture itself, so they will pass inspection for anyone looking for signs of the dreaded Photoshop.  However the subject matter is nothing but performance art masquerading as news.  It may be the photographers themselves setting up a scene, the subjects, or a collaboration.  In whatever case it is not news. The best a staged photo or an altered photo can qualify to be is an illustration, nothing more.

I consider staged photography more threatening than digitally manipulated photography (when used fraudulently), as it is generally easier to make it look ‘good’, and generally somewhat less obvious.

2009 - AP publishes Palestinian grievance theater

2005 - Iraqi terrorists claim to have captured a soldier(left), but it is really an action figure (right). AP buys it.

Class IV: Wholly Fictitious Photography

The fourth class of fraudulent photography has no current examples that I know of.   But it is conceivable that a combination of a staged photo with digital manipulation could–if under the control of skilled artists rather than the hacks working for the Iranian government, Hezbollah, or Hamas– remove basically all limits to the imagination. Massive crowds appearing where they never really were,  apparently brutal and gory violence where nobody was seriously hurt, or rocket strikes multiplied twentyfold from their real number.   The difference between this and simple staged photography would basically be the same as the difference between 21st century movies and films from the early 1980s.

On blogs and free speech

A private weblog is private property, and the blogmaster has every right to control what kind of guest commentary is permitted.

The presence of a commentary system is, however, an implicit invitation to discussion.  People have a right to expect that their comments will either be accepted or rejected.  It is dishonest to use it, for instance, to glean private information for nefarious purposes.

A comment rating system is likewise an implicit invitation to use it, each user according to their own criteria.  It is dishonest to present such a device and punish those who use it.

In memoriam

For all who died for this country, we must endure the present and keep hope alive for the future, or else they have died in vain.

AP publishes staged photograph as news

Original Photo and caption here.
The following content constitutes fair use for the purpose of legitimate criticism and satirical mockery regarding the Associated Press.

This is the original photo.

Now let’s deconstruct the caption:

A Palestinian, passed out from tear gas fired by Israeli troops,

Oh really?  Awfully convenient pose if he’s unconscious, which is what “passed out” means. The hand holding the key just so, and the hand raised as if he’s gripping the barbed wire which is really too far  in the background.  Clearly this man was conscious enough to follow the photographer’s instructions.

holds a key symbolizing the keys to houses left by Palestinians in 1948, during a demonstration

And obviously he’s still demonstrating, as he still has the presence of mind to hold up his symbolic key for the camera.  Rather than question the legitimacy of the Palestinians’ version of history, the AP acts as their willing waterboys, displaying Palestinian grievance theater to the rest of the world.

marking the 61st anniversary of “Nakba,” Arabic for catastrophe, in the West Bank village Bilin, near Ramallah, Friday, May 15, 2008. The rally marked the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who either fled or were driven out of their homes during the 1948 war over Israel’s creation.

Either fled or were lured out, surely you mean. They thought the Arabs were going to win soundly when they attacked, so they fled or actually went to join their armies, but those stubborn Jews just refused to die, and now the Palestinians want to pretend they can just come back home like nothing happened, and yet still plot revenge.   They’ve turned this grudge into their entire culture.  I have no sympathy for the Palestinians whatsoever.

Now let’s have some fun with the picture.

The Keymaster and his mom from Lebanon?

I’m sure the Pallies would have very much liked to have a Photoshop master on their photo crew, but unfortunately their plot to send some of their guys to Gnomon and get some experience working at ILM before coming home, does not appear to have been completed yet.   This is my rendition of what would currently be their best attempt to ‘enhance’ the photo, ‘removing dust speckles and adjusting contrast’.

Too fancy?

I suggest that this photo took a bit of time to get right, and they probably experimented with a few different keys while trying to decide which one looked the most symbolic.  This is my reconstruction of one of the discarded photos.

And here’s another one.

My apologies to Joseph Hoetzl; the key I used in the original version of this last picture (now it’s a different one) was actually a key to a men’s room in the World Trade Center.  To depict it in the hand of a man who was very probably dancing in the streets the day the towers fell seems like sacrilege, since it is exactly the sort of key that would represent the places to which our people can no longer return  thanks to his friends, if any sort of mirror-image demonstration should take place.

It was the first good picture of an ordinary modern key I found under a Yahoo image search for “key”, so I went ahead and did it.

Addendum: I had J. Hoetzl’s formal permission, though I was previously in violation of a Creative Commons license which prohibited derivative works.   I suppose this was sloppy.   My normal modus operandi when playing with photos, whether for personal amusement or for a contest, is to just grab whatever images come off the image search and look good.    Generally speaking, it is considered defensible to do such things provided that the end result is sufficiently altered from the source as to be unrecognizable; I felt it necessary to apologize mainly because after I finished that picture I found the combination inappropriate.  Therefore I have redone the last picture with a different key, for what this silly picture is worth.

In a minor spate of paranoia I altered the notches on the new key, even though I’ve never heard of anybody actually using a photo from the Internet to reproduce a key to let oneself into a tiny suburban house before.  Seems like more effort than it’s worth unless it happens to be a very nice big house loaded with valuables.

Sometimes my humor is so subtle I myself fail to be highly amused.

A better plan for dealing with domestic Islamic terrorism

Very simple: deal directly with these three categories of situations.

Category 1:   Identify persons threatened by domestic violence, get them out, and keep them safe.

Category 2:   Identify persons threatened over matters of speech or personal conviction, and keep them safe.

Category 3:   Identify persons, homes, and places of business threatened by gang or gang-like territorialism, and keep them safe.
Notice that these categories are general, and deliberately so, even though the common denominator should be obvious.

Ideally, one would want an organization sufficiently trained and equipped for such a task, and capable of helping those it takes into its care get similarly prepared.  One umbrella organization, with one arm to establish and administrate shelters, and another arm to provide for the training and equipping of the security force to protect the shelters and escort people to and from places.