Hoax Museum Blog: Photos

Spiderman — 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).

Email Warns of Hidden Camera in Tanning Salons — 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).

Satellites For Sale — 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.

Giant Cowgirl — Here'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)

Wait For The Bling — 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)

Fire Water — What we have here appears to be a guy shooting out a stream of fire as he goes to the bathroom. I'm going to go out on a limb, and say it has to be a hoax. Either the flames have been photoshopped in (which is easy enough to do), or he's holding something concealed in his hand (such as a bottle of lighter fluid), and that's what is really shooting out the stream of fire. The fiery liquid also doesn't appear to be spreading across the floor, as one would expect it to do. (Thanks to Bart for sending this in.)

Thanksgiving Turkey — Happy Thanksgiving everyone. My wife and I hate to have to prepare a huge meal and then deal with all the cleanup, so every year we go out to eat. This year we're going to try the all-you-can-eat Thanksgiving buffet at the Viejas casino. We've heard it's pretty good, and reasonably priced. And where better to celebrate Thanksgiving but at a Native American casino!

Anyway, in honor of Thanksgiving here's an image that's been circulating around for quite a while. As far as I know, it's real (though I'm not 100% sure). It's credited to a Reuters photographer, whose name I don't know. The scene was captured on Thanksgiving 2001 when President Bush did the annual pardoning of the turkey. The turkey that's pardoned gets to live out its life on a farm. There have been spoofs photos of this ceremony (below).

Realistic Truck Art — These photos of trucks painted with optical-illusion art have begun doing the rounds. They're pretty obviously photoshopped since it's the exact same truck in every picture. But they're cool nonetheless. The pictures actually were all entries for a 2005 Rhino Rolling Advertising Award, being given by a German advertising agency. The challenge must have been to dream up the coolest advertisement to paint on a truck. All the entries can be seen here. It looks like the one with the pepsi crates hanging from the roof won.

The Palace of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan — Bad: Falling for an email hoax. Worse: Using the hoax as the basis for your presentation to the local city planning commission, thereby displaying your gullibility to the entire public.

As reported by the Muncie Star Press (no link), Don Love gets the award for doing the latter. He received an email containing a series of pictures of an opulent estate (shown below), with the caption:

In case you're wondering where this hotel is, it isn't a hotel at all. IT IS A HOUSE! It's owned by the family of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the former president of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Abu-Dhabi.

Enraged, he made a slide presentation out of the pictures and showed them to the planning commission, as part of his effort to get them to approve construction of an ethanol plant. His point was that they should promote local energy projects, to prevent all the city's money going to greedy, oil-rich sheiks. He told them: "This is the type of thing being done with your petro dollars that I want to re-patriate. Keep in mind the gentleman has more than 20 wives. This is one of 70 baths. Some are bigger than my house. This is his little swimming pool. These are his cars."

Of course, the pictures don't show a sheik's palace. In reality they show a fancy hotel in Abu Dhabi called the Emirates Palace. All the stuff about 20 wives is bogus too. If Love had bothered to do any research, he would have found this out. He probably could also have found some real pictures of a sheik's palace, which would have been a more effective way of making his point. Incidentally, my other house (the one in my daydreams) looks just like the one in the pictures.

The Power of Makeup — Pasted below is the content of an email that's going around. It's not a hoax, but it deals with issues of camouflage and deception. (It also reminds me of some Before and After pictures that I posted over a year ago.) The subject line of the email is: Never underestimate the power of makeup.

Road Rage Video — Someone emailed me a videoclip titled "Road Rage". It shows an old woman slowly crossing a road, as a guy in a sports car lays on the horn, trying to get her to hurry up. I won't ruin the ending, but it's pretty amusing. However, the video (in the version I received) appears to be an unscripted scene accidentally caught on video by an amateur. There's no identifying information to suggest otherwise. But since I was curious about whether the scene really was unstaged, I managed to find it on Google Video. Their version was a few seconds longer, preserving the ending in which it's revealed to be an ad for IKEA. So apparently the scene was staged. It's still funny. But, I have no clue how the scene is supposed to inspire anyone to shop at IKEA.

Spooky Images — Edna Barrie sent me this series of images that's circulating around. It's accompanied by the caption:

If You Don't Send This to at Least ten People in the Next 2 Hours You will Forever have Bad Luck.....If You do...Something Good Will Happen to you in the Near Future!!!! Good Luck.

What I can't understand is why over-exposed and double-exposed images would cause anyone bad luck. But as it is, I'm slated for permanent bad luck because I waited over two hours to post these on the site.

Number Two Appears in Eye of Hurricane — Viewers of NBC2 saw something strange during the station's coverage of Hurricane Wilma. In the Doppler loop video of the storm coming ashore, the number two suddenly appeared in the eye of the hurricane, formed momentarily by the swirling clouds. The number is so perfectly shaped that it seems like it has to be fake (some form of over-the-top station self-identification). But apparently it's real. The station swears that the image hasn't been altered, and they've provided a link to a NOAA image of the storm [the link is now dead] to prove that the number two really did briefly form in the eye of the storm. I'm sure that Scott Stevens will claim this is proof that the Yakuza really are creating hurricanes.

Loo With A View — A photo is doing the email circuit, showing a bathroom that men who don't enjoy being watched as they 'go about their business' might not want to use. Yes, it is a real bathroom. It's located on the second floor of the Sofitel Hotel in Queenstown, New Zealand. Here's from a press release about the bathroom:

Queenstown photographer Sheena Haywood shot the images of models from local agency Ican -- after Auckland model agencies turned down the job when they heard where the images were going to be placed. “We had a lot of fun with the shoot, made all the better for the fact that there weren't any men there when we did it,” said Sheena.

The general manager of the hotel commented that "he was now under pressure from those of the female persuasion to decorate the neighbouring women's toilets with something equally eye-catching."

Volkswagen Autostadt Car Tower — Here's a new picture doing the email circuit. It's accompanied by this caption:

A Volkswagen Polo is loaded in the car towers of the VW Autostadt in Wolfsburg, northern Germany on Wednesday. The Autostadt, situated next to Volkswagen's headquarter, is the company's theme park, and distribution centre where daily 5,500 visitors view Volkswagen brands like Bentley, Audi, Lamborghini.

It looks like something out of a science-fiction movie, but it's real, as is the caption. The picture was taken by AP photographer Fabian Bimmer. It appeared in SFGate.com's photo gallery on October 19, 2005. (Thanks to Dipankar Mitra for sending it to me.)

Photos of Pre-Crash Helios Airplane — Photos have circulated purporting to show the Helios Airways airplane that crashed on August 14, 2005 near Athens, as seen from the cockpit of a Lockheed Martin F-16 that intercepted it before the crash. According to Flight International, these photos are fake:

Flight International has identified the pictures as high-quality fakes as they show a Helios 737-800, rather than the -300 that crashed. Efforts to disguise this have been made by doctoring the registration to that of the crashed aircraft. The other key giveaways that the aircraft is an -800 rather than a -300, are the twin overwing exits, its fuselage length and trailing edge configuration.

The wikipedia entry about the crash also notes another hoax associated with the event:

News media widely reported that shortly before the crash a passenger sent a SMS transmission indicating that one of the flight crew had become blue in the face, or roughly translated as "The pilot is dead. Farewell, my cousin, here we're frozen." Police later arrested Nektarios-Sotirios Voutas, a 32 year-old private employee from Thessaloniki, who admitted that he had made up the story and given several interviews in order to get attention. Voutas was tried by a court of first instance on August 17, 2005 and received a suspended 6-month imprisonment sentence under a 42-month probation term. The hoax was significant because it seemed to contradict accepted knowledge of cabin-pressure emergencies, especially when combined with other early and erroneous reports.

Canal Bridge Magdeburg — A photo of a "water bridge" is circulating around, accompanied by this caption:

Water Bridge in Germany.... What a feat! Six years, 500 million euros, 918 meters long.......now this is engineering! This is a channel-bridge over the River Elbe and joins the former East and West Germany, as part of the unification project. It is located in the city of Magdeburg, near Berlin. The photo was taken on the day of inauguration. To those who appreciate engineering projects.....

No, the picture hasn't been photoshopped. It's a real water bridge. Amazingly, the information in the accompanying caption is also correct. It is 918 meters long, and it did cost over half-a-billion euros to construct. (thanks to Dipankar for sending the photo)

Lincoln Death Photo — In my hoax photo gallery I display a picture of the body of Abraham Lincoln lying in a casket and explain that the photo is fake because the army didn't allow any photos of Lincoln's body to be taken. But I just received an email from Rich noting that there is one authentic picture of Lincoln's corpse, and he's right. A photographer did manage to snap a shot of the dead Lincoln as he was lying in state in Manhattan's City Hall. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton had the photograph confiscated, and it was supposed to be destroyed. But instead, Stanton kept it, and it was found by historians almost 100 years later. It's the only true Lincoln death photo in existence.

Emily Fox Stacks Cups — About a year ago I posted an entry about cup stacking, since I found it hard to believe it was a real sport. Now after watching this video of Emily Fox stacking cups (requires windows media player and also viewable at speedstacks.com), I've got to say it's not only real but pretty impressive. I don't think I've ever seen cups move that fast. Assuming, that is, the video hasn't been speeded up.

Monster Crocodile in New Orleans — Michael Maffei sent me some giant crocodile pictures that have begun doing the rounds. They're accompanied by this caption:

Now this is a Crocodile ! This crocodile was found in New Orleans swimming down the street. 21 FT long, 4,500 lbs, around 80 years old minimum. Specialists said that he was looking to eat humans because he was too old to catch animals. This crocodile was killed by the army last Sunday at 3:00 pm, currently he is in the freezer at the Azur hotel. The contents of it's stomach will be analyzed this Friday at 2:30pm.

The pictures are real enough, but they're weren't taken in New Orleans. These are pictures of the Monster Crocodile of Pointe-Noire (in the Republic of the Congo). They've been circulating for over two years. David Emery notes that the crocodile was really estimated to be 16 feet long and weighed about 1874 lbs. That's still a lot bigger than I'd ever care to encounter.