Hoax Museum Blog: Photos

Four Eyes Illusion —
Status: Fake
image Obviously photoshopped, but interesting nonetheless. Looking at it too long may cause a sensation of whirling and loss of balance. I found it at Mason Inman's blog. (I have no idea where he found it).

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006.   Comments (11)

Dukes of Fallujah —
Status: Photoshopped
This is pretty obviously photoshopped. The colors are too bright, for one thing. Also, I don't think the Army lets soldiers custom paint their jeeps. (via Telebush)
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Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006.   Comments (14)

Fire Fart —
Status: Fake
image This video of a guy lighting a candle by setting his fart on fire is obviously fake. (Given that the video is one big fart joke, it's probably not safe for work, though it's otherwise work safe.) However, it seems that a number of people actually think it's real. To verify that it's fake, all you need to do is visit the url displayed on the film: sheepfilms.co.uk, which is the website of amateur filmmaker David Packer (aka Sheep). He has a lot of films starring himself that employ various special effects, such as fake fire farts.
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006.   Comments (7)

Feminist Icons Admit to Prank —
Status: Confession of a prank
Back in 1970 a picture was taken showing four young women waving placards with messages such as "Ban the Man" and "Down with Men and Marriage." The picture became a symbol of feminism. But thirty-five years later, the women have confessed that their anti-man protest was just a prank. Margot Ducat explains:

"One day my colleagues - Jo Vincent, Sue James and Shirley Francis - found a wedding dress stuffed in one of the cupboards. Quite why someone left it there we never did find out. Anyway, Shirley tried it on and it was a perfect fit, so we just decided to do something to liven up Surbiton [a London suburb]. It was a rather dull and staid town, so I suggested we telephone the local paper, the Kingston and Malden Borough News, and tell them we were protesting against men. Shirley wore the wedding dress, we made our banners and set off down Victoria Road. Passers-by just gawped in amazement. When it came to being interviewed, we told the press we were militant women's libbers who were fed up with how men seemed to get the best deal out of life. We just made the whole thing up. It was a prank to enliven a very dull day."

Although the article in the Telegraph says that this photograph is very famous and has been reprinted many times, I don't actually have any idea what photograph they're talking about. (And the online version of the article doesn't show the picture.) Anyone know what the image in question is? It's got to be online somewhere.
Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006.   Comments (28)


Red Iceberg —
Status: Real
image Here's an odd image I found floating around on the web. It looks photoshopped, but it turns out that it's real. A Danish artist, Marco Evaristti, spray-painted an iceberg red back in 2004 to make some kind of artistic statement. As this MSNBC article explains:

Evaristti and his crew sailed in two ice breakers from the small town of Ilullissat, Greenland, on Wednesday, and zigzagged among icebergs for about 30 minutes before they found the perfect frozen canvas. Working in minus 9 degree weather, it took about two hours for the 40-year-old artist to paint the exposed tip of the iceberg, a volume of nearly 10,000 square feet.

Evaristti is known for other controversial work:

Evaristti, who was born in Chile, drew widespread attention — and disdain — when he displayed 10 working blenders filled with goldfish in a Danish gallery in 2000. He invited guests to turn the devices on and someone did, grinding up a pair of goldfish. The gallery director was tried on charges of animal cruelty, but acquitted.
Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006.   Comments (14)

Biker Hits Pothole —
Status: Real
Everyone is linking to these photos of a biker hitting a pothole in the rain and taking a nasty spill. They were taken by Liu Tao for the Beijing Youth Daily. The thing is that Liu knew the pothole was there and, instead of telling people about it, just waited for someone to fall into it so that he could get his shot. Which kind of makes this a photo sequence of a prank in action. Beijing Youth Daily readers have apparently been outraged by the photos, writing in that Liu is "disgusting" and "should really be condemned."

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Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2005.   Comments (22)

Mariah Carey’s Saudi Arabia Album Covers — Images purporting to show Saudi Arabian versions of Mariah Carey's album covers have recently appeared on the web. Mediabum.com says that "Because of the laws over there her album covers had to be touched up to be made less sexy." Maybe. It sounds like something that would be done in Saudi Arabia. However, the lack of a clear source for these images makes me suspicious. They could equally well have been created by somebody playing around with photoshop. (And why is there no arabic script on these Saudi Arabian covers?) (And incidentally, I just read that Mariah Carey has 17 Number One singles, tying the number that Elvis had. This is odd because I'm unable to name a single song by her. With 17 #1 songs, I figured I'd know at least one of them.)

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Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2005.   Comments (33)

Ant Carries Crackers —
Status: Photoshopped
image My strong hunch is that this picture has been photoshopped. It looks too well composed not to have been. Also, I don't see how the crackers could balance that evenly on the ant's back. I don't know where the picture comes from, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was either from Worth1000 or some kind of inspirational poster.
Update: It is a Worth1000 picture. (Big surprise there, 90% of hoax pictures seem to originate from there.) It's part of a "Mission Impossible" gallery and was created by Jaffar1900. (Thanks to Marcan Dy Arabian for finding it on Worth1000.)

Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2005.   Comments (15)

Giving Santa the Bird —
Status: Undetermined
image Here's a picture that's doing the rounds. I have no idea how long it's been circulating. Anyway, it's possible that the little girl's finger has been photoshopped in. But my guess is that the picture is real enough. Though who can tell anymore. I have no clue where the picture originally came from. Click the image to read the accompanying text. (It's another one of those 'priceless' parodies.)

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005.   Comments (9)

The Three Magi —
Status: Fake
Yes, that's Tony Blair on the left and President Bush on the right. In the middle is the Duke of Edinburgh. They're dressed up as the three magi. It's pretty obvious that the picture is fake. Bush and Blair didn't really don these costumes. But it's not fake in the sense of being photoshopped. These are actually dummies (wax dummies, specifically) that appeared in a nativity scene at London's Madame Tussauds last Christmas. (Victoria and David Beckham served as Mary and Joseph.) Church leaders protested the scene, and it was soon shut down after being vandalized. But this picture still seems to be circulating around.
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Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005.   Comments (4)

Brazilian Sand Girl —
Status: Real picture (fake girl)
image Check out this picture. Is it a real girl lying in the sand? Or is it a sand sculpture? Hard to tell. The photographer, Jair Ribbeiro, says that it's a sand sculpture:

I was walkin' in the Farol da Barra Beach (Bahia Brazil) last august '04 when i saw this sculpture in the sand.. It was really unbelieveble.. The guy that made this is a genius.. Leonardo!!!!

It actually looks faker in the thumbnail than it does in the larger version. (via Optical Illusions Etc.)
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005.   Comments (22)

Birthplace of George W. Bush —
Status: Hoax
image The picture of this Connecticut highway sign has been circulating for quite a while, and it's obviously photoshopped (Snopes has a picture of the non-photoshopped version, which lacks the phrases "Birthplace of George W. Bush" and "We apologize"... though their non-photoshopped version actually kind of looks like it's been photoshopped). But apparently there really are signs outside of New Haven, Connecticut welcoming people to New Haven "The birthplace of President George W. Bush '68." George W was born there in 1946, while his father was attending graduate school there. I'm surprised no one has edited these signs to add a "We Apologize." (Maybe they have and I haven't heard about it.) Incidentally, New Haven's other claim to fame is that it used to be the oyster capital of the United States.
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005.   Comments (27)

Shark Caught With Shark in Mouth —
Status: Real
Photos are doing the rounds (especially in Australia) of a large shark that was caught with another shark in its mouth. According to abc.net.au, the shark was caught at Tannum Beach:

Apparently the smaller fish was caught on Tannum's shark lines. While being pulled in, the movement attracted the attention of its larger colleague. The tiger shark was so reluctant to let go of its free meal, it was eventually pulled in to shore. These photographs depicting the shark, and its last meal, have since been doing the rounds - and perhaps persuading a few people to think twice before dipping a toe in around the Tannum area.

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Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2005.   Comments (17)

Ronaldinho Nike Ad —
Status: Undetermined (but I'm guessing fake)
image Nike has a new ad featuring Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho Gaucho. In the ad Ronaldinho puts on a pair of Nikes, juggles the ball a few times, and then kicks the ball towards the goal so that it hits the crossbar and bounces directly back to him. He does this four times in a row. And it's all shot in a single take. This has inspired a lot of discussion on the net, because it's hard to believe anyone could be skilled enough to do this. In an article posted on the BBC (in Portuguese... I read it via AltaVista Translate) Ronaldinho swears that the scene is real, although the reporters interviewing him refuse to believe him. Given that it's an ad, I would assume it's fake, since one should always assume that what you see in ads is bogus, unless it's proven otherwise.
Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2005.   Comments (56)

Cooling Down With David —
Status: Fake
Maybe some city really did sponsor the urban art project depicted below. But I doubt it. It definitely looks photoshopped to me. There must be an original David-free version of this picture floating around somewhere.
Update: The fountain is real. It's the Crown Fountain designed by artist Jaume Plensa in Chicago's Millennium Park. But the image of David is fake. The Millennium Park website explains:

The fountain consists of two 50-foot glass block towers at each end of a shallow reflecting pool. The towers project video images from a broad social spectrum of Chicago citizens, a reference to the traditional use of gargoyles in fountains, where faces of mythological beings were sculpted with open mouths to allow water, a symbol of life, to flow out. Plensa adapted this practice by having faces of Chicago citizens projected on LED screens and having water flow through a water outlet in the screen to give the illusion of water spouting from their mouths. The collection of faces, Plensa's tribute to Chicagoans, was taken from a cross-section of 1,000 residents.

In other words, it would be possible to project an image of Michelangelo's David onto the tower, but it doesn't sound as if this has ever been done.

Update: This image comes from a Fark photoshop contest. It was created by a Farker named gigglechick.

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Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2005.   Comments (8)

Spiderman —
Status: Real
image Here's an odd image that I found posted on a computer graphics forum, where it's the subject of debate about whether it's real or photoshopped. (They've even got a poll going about it.) I would vote that it's real, even though it's amazing that the kid could jump that high up on the wall. (Though with a running start, and being young and athletic enough, it's do-able.) If it's photoshopped, it's incredibly well done.
Update: It's been revealed as real. Apparently this guy (Ryan) has a talent for this kind of thing (jumping and seeming to stick to things).

Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005.   Comments (47)

Email Warns of Hidden Camera in Tanning Salons —
Status: Hoax
A small British newspaper reports that tanning salons in New Eltham (which, I guess, is a suburb of London) are being targeted by a hoax email warning that hidden cameras are snapping photos of women as they tan. The email is accompanied by "dozens of revealing pictures of naked women using tanning beds, who are obviously unaware they are being photographed." (Two of the pictures are below.) The article continues:

Angry women who use tanning beds are circulating the pictures to each other, believing them to be genuine and warning their friends and family not to use the salon.

Apparently the candid pictures actually show a tanning salon in California. The article doesn't state if the photos were taken by an actual hidden camera, or if they were staged. But I'm sure that this hoax must be popping up in more places than just New Eltham (especially if it started in California).

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Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005.   Comments (14)

Satellites For Sale —
Status: Real
image Here's another picture doing the rounds of an astronaut floating in space outside the space shuttle, holding up a 'For Sale' sign. Since it's so easy to change signs in photoshop, I guess some might suspect the image to be fake. But it's real, and it's actually pretty old. It dates to 1984. (I have no idea why it's suddenly started to circulate again.) NASA provides this description of the image:

Astronaut Dale A. Gardner, having just completed the major portion of his second extravehicular activity (EVA) period in three days, holds up a "For Sale" sign refering to the two satellites, Palapa B-2 and Westar 6 that they retrieved from orbit after their Payload Assist Modules (PAM) failed to fire. Astronaut Joseph P. Allen IV, who also participated in the two EVAs, is reflected in Gardner's helmet visor. A portion of each of two recovered satellites is in the lower right corner, with Westar 6 nearer Discovery's aft.
Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005.   Comments (4)

Giant Cowgirl —
Status: Real
imageHere's a picture going around of a giant cowgirl. As far as I can tell, it's real (i.e. not photoshopped). But the trick, I think, is that the woman on the left is posing beside particularly short women, thereby making herself look bigger. If you look at the refrigerator in the background, she seems to be just slightly taller than it, which would put her (I'm guessing) at around six-and-a-half feet. That's tall, but not gigantic. I don't think she's as tall as Heather Haven, whose picture is in one of my hoax photo tests. (via SnarkySpot)
Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005.   Comments (24)

Wait For The Bling —
Status: Real
image Sightings of a curious abstinence-promoting billboard are being reported throughout Iowa. The message that the billboard offers: Wait For The Bling. While teen pregnancy is obviously a serious problem, these billboards almost seem like a joke (and have a few people questioning if they're photoshopped). But they seem to be real. The fine print on the bottom of the billboard reveals that they're created by the Iowa Department of Public Health's Abstinence Education Program. Maybe they'll have the desired effect, though I doubt it. Seems to me like they could just as easily be interpreted to mean "Don't do anything until the guy gives you an expensive gift." (via Eschaton)

Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005.   Comments (18)

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