The doctoring of photos, once considered the reserve of tyrants and UFO nuts, is becoming increasingly widespread.
With photo-editing
software becoming ever more sophisticated, and the internet allowing
instant distribution, it has never been easier to create and spread
hoax images.
Below we present some of the most striking, interesting and
controversial fake photos, most of them produced with Photoshop in the
last five years.
Some were created to amuse, some to mislead, while others were an attempt to rewrite history.
And although the
credulity of the internet has been blamed for allowing hoax photos to
flourish, several of the fakes below were actually uncovered by
bloggers after being distributed by mainstream media outlets.
1) Shark lunges at helicopter
This striking fake
was created by merging two separate images - a US Air Force helicopter
on a training exercise in San Francisco, and a great white shark
leaping out of the water off the cost of South Africa.
The hoax emerged
in 2001, and was later circulated via email with a caption claiming it
showed a shark attacking British Navy crew in South Africa, despite the
fact that the Golden Gate Bridge is visible in the background.
2) World Trade Centre Tourist
This hoax emerged
on the internet just weeks after the Sept 11 attack. Although rational
assessment of the picture quickly reveals its flaws (how could the
tourist not hear the plane? how did the camera survive?), the horror of
the scenario and the rawness of America’s wounds gave the image a
huge emotional impact.
It also sparked a
flurry of tongue-in-cheek parodies featuring the same tourist pasted
into ever more preposterous situations. (click for: 911 Tourist Parodies )
3) Iranian missile test
Tehran’s
Revolutionary Guards wanted the test firing of nine ballistic missiles
in July, 2008, to send a message to the world. So when one of the
missiles failed to launch, they released a doctored photo with the
faulty launcher removed and one of the successful rockets copied and
pasted in its place.
Unfortunately for
the Guards the original launch photo, complete with grounded missile,
had already been published in an Iranian newspaper, and the crude
deception was revealed to great amusement in the West.
4) Chairman Mao airbrushes out his former friends
The Chinese
Communist leader had no scruples about re-writing history to suit his
current circumstances. He arranged to have Po Ku, a former ally with
whom he had fallen out, removed from the official version of the photo
above.
And Mao’s
photoshopping tendencies lived on even after his death. This photo of a
memorial service held for the leader in 1976 was later altered to
remove the so-called “Gang of Four”, the political clique
who were subsequently charged with treason.
5) Snowball the monster cat
This photo of an
enormous cat spread around the world over email in 2000, sometimes
accompanied by a background story claiming that the mother of the
animal had grown up near a Canadian nuclear lab.
It wasn’t
until the following year that the man in the photo came forward to
admit he’d faked the image on his computer.
Cordell Hauglie
had sent the photo to friends as a joke, not expecting it to circulate
more widely. The cat did exist, and belonged to Mr Hauglie’s
daughter, but weighed only 21 pounds.
6) Smoke over Beirut
The Reuters news
agency withdrew this photo showing bomb damage in Beirut during the
2006 Lebanon War after bloggers pointed out that repeat patterns in the
smoke looked like they had been created by Adobe Photoshop’s
“clone” tool, with the effect of exaggerating the effects
of the Israeli assault.
 |
The altered photo |
Reuters admitted
that it had been doctored by Adnan Hajj, the Lebanese freelancer who
took the original photo, and have since removed all his images from
their archive. Bloggers have accused Hajj of manipulating other photos
during the conflict.
 |
The original |
7) Antelopes and trains in harmony
This image of a
herd of Tibetan antelopes running undisturbed beneath a train on the
new Qinghai–Tibet railway was released by Xinhua, the Chinese
state news agency, as evidence that the controversial high-speed line
was not damaging the environment.
It was named
“most memorable news photo of the year” by China Central
Television, but after users of a photography website pointed out flaws
in the image, the photographer Liu Weiqiang admitted that he had
created it but stitching together two separate pictures.
8. Tsunami captured from tower block
This extraordinary
image was sent to in-boxes across the world shortly after the 2004
tsunami, along with a caption claiming it was taken moments before the
huge wave swamped Phuket in Thailand.
But the photo was
a fraud on both counts - the seafront was actually that of the Chilean
city of Antofagasta, and the wave had been digitally added. The Asian
tsunami, while deadly, did not produce towering waves of the type
portrayed in the image.
9) Bush reading upside down
This photo of
George W Bush holding a picture book the wrong way up during a visit to
a school delighted some opponents of the Republican president, and
helped foster his buffoonish image.
But press photos
from the event in 2002 revealed that Mr Bush had been holding the book
correctly - hoaxers had simply used photo editing software to rotate
the cover.
10) Shark sneaks up on scuba divers
This photo was an
submitted as an entry for an online photo-editing contest on the theme
of “Vacation Bloopers”, but was then spread around the web
by email with an accompanying blurb claiming it was taken by the
pictured couple’s son during a scuba diving holiday in Australia.
The narrative
claimed that the boy’s parents refused to believe they had been
so close to a shark until they had the pictures developed.
11) John Kerry with Jane Fonda
The 2004
Democratic presidential candidate was a known anti-Vietnam activist, so
the idea that he shared a podium with actress and peace campaigner Jane
Fonda wasn’t too far-fetched.
But the photo that
circulated around the web in election year was a fake, a composite of
two other images. Ken Light, who took the original photo, said that the
doctoring “tells us more about the troublesome combination of
Photoshop and the Internet than it does about the prospective
Democratic candidate for president.”
12) Giant skeletons discovered in India
The National
Geographic Society still receives inquiries about this photo, which was
published in an Indian newspaper in 2007 to support an article claiming
that the Society’s archaeologists had discovered the remains of
giant humans.
The photo, which
had been created in jest as past of a photo-editing competition, had
been circulating on blogs and conspiracy websites for many years.
13) Benito Mussolini, the fearless horseman
The sword-wielding Italian fascist leader had the horse handler removed from this portrait, to give him amore heroic aspect.
14) Karl Rove’s ’secret file’
When this image of
George W Bush’s top adviser leaving a restaurant carrying a file
marked “Coptix” emerged on the web, it appeared to confirm
rumours of a secret White House email system used for nefarious
purposes.
But the image was
a prank knocked together by staff at Coptix - a web firm whose named
had been incorrectly linked to the alleged email system - and bloggers
who had seized on the photo as evidence of a sinister Republican
network were forced to eat humble pie.
For the record, Rove had been at the restaurant - a BBQ eatery called Porkers - but was not carrying any folder.
15) Soldier doll held hostage in Iraq
An insurgent group
calling itself the Al Mujahedeen Brigade posted this photo of a man it
claimed was a US soldier called John Adam in 2005, threatening to
behead him unless Iraqi prisoners were released.
The group’s
claims made the press, until a toy firm executive came forward and said
the pictured soldier was actually one of its action dolls, known as
“Special Ops Cody”.
16) Fidel Castro made to look like Hitler
When this photo
showing the Cuban leader with dark, sleek hair and a Hitler-style
moustache was published in a Cuban newspaper, Communist officials went
into a panic, scurrying around the island to seize copies before they
could be sold.
Although the exact
details about what happened are unclear, it appears the front page
photo was digitally altered by an anti-Castro member of staff at the
Granma newspaper.
