Digital photography’s triumph over film has been a hugely mixed blessing for photojournalism. Saying goodbye to the darkroom has made it possible to overcome the obstacles of tight deadlines and geographic distances that have given newspapers headaches for generations.
There’s a dark side to digital convenience, though. Everyone by now understands that cheap computers and powerful photo editing software have made it easier than ever before to create phony images, the bane of the serious journalist.
Of course, many examples of skillful photo fakery proliferated in the analog age, from cardboard fairies frolicking with little girls in backyard gardens to Leon Trotsky’s mysterious disappearance from historical Soviet images. But the world of Photoshop has made serious image alterations far easier and less detectible than ever before.
So it’s almost perversely refreshing to remember that even a digital camera can be employed in some good old-fashioned photographic deception. Such was the case in the “Monster Pig” saga of 2007.
On May 26, The Kansas City Star ran a wire service brief in the “Talkers” column about 11-year-old Alabaman Jamison Stone, whose father claimed he killed a wild hog measuring over 9 feet and tipping the scales at over half a ton.
Problem was that the claims weren’t accurate. A follow-up story on June 2, 2007, noted that “Monster Pig” wasn’t a wild hog at all. Instead, it was a young farmed pig named Fred. The first story had wisely not substantiated any of the claims, attributing the information to Jamison’s dad.
But wait what about the photo that The Star ran with the initial story? It clearly shows Jamison with his elbows atop the felled beast, which looks to be absolutely huge, many times the size of the boy.
Photoshop? Try good old-fashioned camera trickery. Like the time-honored fisherman’s technique, it looks as though the person shooting the picture placed the pig in the foreground and the boy crouching well behind, his arms positioned as if they’re resting on the animal’s back. It’s a ploy of misdirection often exploited by magicians, who know the human eye often assumes that adjacent objects are actually touching.
Zooming in on the boy’s arms, it appears he’s nowhere near the pig. See my blog at http://adastrum.kansascity.com for a high-resolution detail.
The overall effect, especially printed just a few inches across on newspaper presses, is very misleading.
Examples like this are just one more reason why newspapers are rightly skeptical of submitted photographs as evidence. Too many recent instances of photojournalists faking images are troubling enough but at least news organizations have the ability to take punitive action when they discover deception on a staffer or freelancer’s part.
The entertainment, fashion and tabloid press routinely creates composite images from multiple sources. That’s a line newspapers shouldn’t cross, unless the image is clearly labeled as a photo illustration.
With “Monster Pig,” the fakery was low-tech and still plenty effective.
