Digitally altered sports photo - Now you see him, now you don't

Digitally altered sports photo - Now you see him, now you don't

Looking for a photo of Matt Bettencourt , the winner of the Reno-Tahoe Open golf tournament in Reno, Nevada today I found only 17 images to choose from.
...
Among the few to choose from, not surprisingly, I found the acknowledgment moment. This one was shot on the 11th hole after Bettencourt made birdie and is smiling broadly. I found two versions of that particular moment. One was a medium distance telephoto from the knees up and the second was a much tighter look. When I saw them I thought two different photographers shot them at the same moment from slightly different angles because the background was different.
...
I realized that I went back to those two frames from the 11th hole and egads something was terribly amiss. The man (caddie?) behind the golfer in the looser crop had disappeared from the more tightly cropped version. I opened both images and zoomed into that details and it was really quite easy to determine that the image is the same but one had been doctored with software to remove the other man. I suppose Feldman thought it would make the image better. I won't argue that. If the caddie is not there the image is somewhat better. But at what cost?

I realize that there is no big conspiracy here, but I wanted to point out how photo manipulation is happening even in mundane things to the point that is is difficult to believe anything we see anymore in the news. I hope this thread can serve as a reference and talking point for the artificial reality we are building around ourselves in the media.

That's some seriously crappy editing. Nice that it was found in time. It's amazing how bad edits some people try to pass.

reply to post by PsykoOps


I agree totally. I was reminded of it when I read this thread PROOF that BP faked their command center photo which shows even worse editing.

photographyblog.dallasnews.com...


It was just a simple mistake, apparently he didn't mean to send the edited version.

Kind of like the supermodels and actors they've been airbrushing for decades, eh?

[edit on 22-7-2010 by Zeta Reticulan]

reply to post by freelance_zenarchist


Good catch. Big mistake on that guy's part, but given the nature of the events, I would believe his story that it was an accident. Scary though how easily fake pictures can make into the press.

ACK dbl pst

[edit on 7-23-2010 by rogerstigers]

As a graphic designer, I "enhanced" a lot of pictures, and I find nothing wrong with the process, as long as it is not used for deception purpose. All I can say is that was a very botched job. The latest version of Photoshop can actually do a better job with automatic tools...

Amateur!

reply to post by rogerstigers


I remember a couple of years ago when the "Smiley Face Gang" was in the news and I noticed a photo that had been photoshopped for some unknown reason. I saw the picture with the news story on both AOL news and USA Today news. Well anyway, the picture was of a smiley face on a tree that had been spray-painted near the site of a drowning. Well on AOL news, the smiley face was just the standard, round yellow smiley face. But on USA Today, the face had red devil horns on the head. I know it was the exact same picture because everything was exactly the same except for the devil horns. The tree even had all the exact same markings. Does anyone know if this would have any significance or maybe why they photoshopped the picture by adding/removing devil horns? I can see why the sports photo was photoshopped. They probably just wanted that guy to be the only one in the picture. But why photoshop gang graffiti?

[edit on 23-7-2010 by HarmonicNights]