World Press Photo of the Year was faked with Photoshop

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"It turns out that the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year — the largest and most prestigious press photography award — was, in actual fact, a fake. The World Press Photo association hasn’t yet stripped the photographer, Paul Hansen, of the title, but presumably it’s just a matter of time. Rather than discussing the politics of photo manipulation, though — is it faked, or is it merely enhanced? — we’re going to look at how Hansen managed to trick a panel of experienced judges with his shooping skillz, and how a seasoned computer scientist spotted the fraudulent forgery from a mile off."

Came across this and cant help but think, is there anything the media syndicates wont try and get away with these days, how low can one person go!

They must have known it was a fake!

www.extremetech.com...

The photo won because it purportedly shows how mean the Israeli's are to the Palestinians. No real secret there. I don't they cared it was fake or not.

Yeah, I wouldn't call this fake. All he did was enhance some highlights and shadow regions. Photos have been enhanced ever since people figured out how to do so, long before photoshop. *shrugs*

Fake would be copying and pasting images and combing them and calling it a photo.... not this.

Originally posted by WaterBottle
Yeah, I wouldn't call this fake. All he did was enhance some highlights and shadow regions. Photos have been enhanced ever since people figured out how to do so, long before photoshop. *shrugs*

Fake would be copying and pasting images and combing them and calling it a photo.... not this.

edit on 13-5-2013 by WaterBottle because: (no reason given)

Then (if you read the article fully) you would have seen he did just that. The final photo is a combination of 3 separate photos, with part pasted in to the total.

So, even by your own admittance, it is faked.

reply to post by Krakatoa

Originally posted by Krakatoa
Then (if you read the article fully) you would have seen he did just that. The final photo is a combination of 3 separate photos, with part pasted in to the total.

Actually, the article says it's "almost certainly" three different photos. I don't know how the author has determined that, but he's not certain.

And the jury president says:

'we are confident that the images conform to the accepted practices of the profession.'

Source

Apparently, there's some wiggle room there.

Originally posted by WaterBottle
Yeah, I wouldn't call this fake. All he did was enhance some highlights and shadow regions. Photos have been enhanced ever since people figured out how to do so, long before photoshop. *shrugs*

Fake would be copying and pasting images and combing them and calling it a photo.... not this.

edit on 13-5-2013 by WaterBottle because: (no reason given)

Please read the full article. Its 3 images spliced together, if that's not copying and pasting I don't know what is!

Its as fake as a £3 note!

There are dead kids in said image, you just don't do that kind of thing in my opinion!

reply to post by Krakatoa


There is no proof that it is 3 photos spliced together. Simply using the dodge or burn tool would create "error levels" and wonky shadows.

It looks heavily enhanced, but most photos are these days.

It could be fake, who knows? Until there is proof I'm not condemning the pic.

What I see wrong in the photo is:

The shadows in the faces of front persons. The light is
impossibly from the left or theur right side, because of the wall.

The source(s) of light on the bald heads, from right and left.

. . .and I only looked about 10-15 seconds. . .

I guess we can find more "wrongs" in the back, away from us, in the photo(s)?

Blue skies.

You would have to wonder though if a group of people seemingly running down an enclosed alley way, bearing the bodies of deceased children then why is some idiot with a camera standing in their way taking photos?

IS kinda obvious it has been manipulated you see "photos" like this all the time with ultra enhanced colours.

Wow, not faked. Not manipulated. It's enhanced. That's not even in the same ballpark. Stupid article.

The photo, dubbed Gaza Burial, was purportedly captured on November 20, 2012 by Paul Hansen. Hansen was in Gaza City when Israeli forces retaliated in response to rocket fire from Palestinian rocket fire. The photo shows two of the casualties of the Israeli attack, carried to their funeral by their uncles. Now, the event itself isn’t a fake

Real event. Manipulated photo.

We debate whether the photo is unaltered or if it was enhanced, or even composited.....
but the truth is two innocent children were killed. The ending of their young lives is more of a travesty than a manipulated image.

Peace.

Photoshop is a part of the modern photographer's skill set. Just how people used to cross process to get all kinds of effects. Leaving aside the subject matter, technically it's a pretty good piece of work.

The picture is not FAKE. It was manipulated to produce a better, more properly illuminated photo. Pro photographers ALL do this. It is not something this one man did to deceive folks.

Originally posted by andy06shake
Please read the full article. Its 3 images spliced together, if that's not copying and pasting I don't know what is!

From what I understand of it, it may have been three times the same photo, to create a high-dynamic-range version of the photo with three slightly different versions made from the original photo.

reply to post by Krakatoa


Eh.. but they were three photos taken right there within seconds of each other. He snapped off a bunch and "fixed" a few parts to get the perfect image. It's not like he made a composite using parts from something else or staged anything. I don't think it's even proven he did anything but lighten it, but if its a composite it's a composite of three nearly identical pictures.

reply to post by andy06shake


Read my above post. There is no proof of that, but also even if it was combined pictures it was three near identical pics. It's not like he added people that weren't there. They would have been three photos snapped off right in a row.

It's an interesting issue -- we all tend to believe things found on the Internet. How can we be certain that the photos we're shown ARE correct??

For the record, photographers have been enhancing and faking things for over a century (there are famous pictures from the Nazi era and Soviet cold war where people have been erased from a photo.) Our technology makes it possible to blur the line between what we see and what they want us to see, and using greenscreen technology, they can even change the ads that appear in the background at sports events in "real time."

This will be a difficult issue for historians and document archives to decide.

Now, the event itself isn’t a fake — there are lots of other photos online that show the children being carried through the streets of Gaza — but the photo itself is almost certainly a composite of three different photos, with various limbs spliced together from each of the images, and then further manipulation to illuminate the mourners’ faces.

I can't really tell if images were stitched together, but the rest they are complaining about is the standard now for photography. It's funny because there is grumbling in the profession. Some (very few) that adhere to the old, original (film) way of taking pictures. And the rest that use HDR or after affects to get their pics to look not entirely crap.

The biggest secret to photography, was that even really good photographers used to takes hundreds of pictures to get that "one" photo.

And they played around in the darkroom alot.

But not, it can be done on an iPhone.... so...

The shadowing, color, and perspective looks fake as heck in the OPs photo.

But still a good looking end result. I'm not for or against the Palestinian or Israelis cause. This picture looks great.

The media machine will do what they need to do to get views/publicity. Guess what, you met their criteria. You helped them with publicity...

Sure they will send thanks your direction.

People, I am in now way attempting to condone the Israelis treatment of the poor Palestinians. I think the actions perpetrated against them are atrocious, bordering on genocidal!

However if indeed this image has been tampered with, by that I mean 3 different pictures spliced together and then enhanced. How do we know what's the truth and what's not?

I imagine a simple way the photographer may redeem himself would be to release the original images so we can compare them to the doctored picture in question.

If a picture does indeed paint a thousand words I do not imagine that its a good idea for any of those words to be made up words!

Tell it how it is, artistic temperament should not apply in a situation like this!