Hoax Museum Blog: Photos

Lies, Damned Lies, and Photography — "While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph." Paul Vallely has written a good article on the history of photographic fraud for the Independent.

Princess Juliana Airport — This is a pretty amazing picture, and it screams 'Photoshop!' After all, where in the world would planes really land that close to sunbathers on a beach? It looks like the plane is landing right on top of them. Well, the place is Princess Juliana Airport in St. Maarten. And the airplanes really do come in that close to the beach. A collection of shots of planes landing at Princess Juliana is circulating as a powerpoint file via email. Jozee V sent the file along to me (Thanks, Jozee!). At first I couldn't believe that the shots were real, but after a little research I was convinced. The thumbnail shot was taken by the photographer Justin Cederholm. You can see more shots of planes landing at Princess Juliana Airport here, and here, and here. And if you don't believe this is a real airport, then check out it's website. Trust me, it's real. But personally I think those people sunbathing there are crazy. It seems to me like it would be a good way to shatter your eardrums.

Why you should not feed your cat table scraps — I don't know what it is about oversized domestic cats that's so endlessly fascinating, but I've got to admit that, as the owner of a rather corpulent kitty, I'm just as intrigued by this subject as everyone else seems to be. So anyway, first there was Snowball. Then along came Munchkin. And now the latest tubby tabby to do the email rounds is Scrappy, the Super-Sized Cat. This email comes with the subject line: Why you shouldn't feed your cat table scraps. I don't know if it's real or not, but at the risk of putting my reputation as a hoax expert on the line, it kind of looks real to me.
Update: A visitor pointed out that for more tubby cats it's worth visiting tubcat.com.

Hanoi John, Part II — Now that photo of Kerry with Jane Fonda that I talked about in the previous post may have been fake, but this new photo that has just surfaced is undoubtedly real. (via Eschaton)

Hanoi John — A doctored photo of John Kerry speaking with Jane Fonda (aka 'Hanoi Jane') at a 1971 anti-war rally has been making the rounds lately and getting a lot of attention. It was almost immediately debunked as a phony. As this Newsday article describes, the original photo was taken by Ken Light. The doctored version of it began popping up in conservative chat rooms a few weeks ago. As the political campaign heats up, I expect that many more photoshopped pictures of political candidates will surface. What I found surprising was not the picture itself, but the speed at which it was debunked.

Mountain Lion Email Hoax — Quite a few people have received this picture in their email showing a man holding up a giant (dead) mountain lion. According to the accompanying text, the lion was shot by the man near Leon, Kansas while he was out deer hunting, though different versions of the email list different locations. Is the picture real? It is. But the accompanying text is incorrect. According to this article on Buckmasters.com, the lion was actually shot near Seattle, Washington. The picture first appeared in Fair Chase magazine, published by the Boone and Crockett Club, before it spread to email.

Tall-Tale Aviation Photo — Richard has written in with a question about the photograph (to the right) that's being sold as a print by The New York Times. It shows the sky above Portland, Oregon filled with biplanes. It was taken in 1920 by the photographer C.S. Woodruff. Richard questions whether the picture can possibly be real, and I think he's right to do so. First of all, the biplanes seem dangerously close to each other, all clustered together in a swarm. Second, by 1920 there were hundreds of biplanes and trained pilots in the U.S. But what would they have been doing all gathered together in Portland? Could one city have produced that many pilots and planes in 1920? Probably not. Finally, if you look at a larger version of the picture, it's pretty obvious that it's the same biplane pasted into the photo numerous times. In other words, this is a tall-tale photo. Such photos were all the rage in the early twentieth century. A sky filled with planes must have seemed like a fairly farfetched concept to people in 1920.

Mexican Ghost — I just received this spooky photo from Katherine DeLong who explains that it's been making the rounds via email. The photo is accompanied by the following text:

This picture was taken in one of the rooms of "Our Lady of Charity" hospital in Toluca, Mexico while one of the patients was asleep, the patient had been involved in a multiple car accident and the lady under the bed was the only one person who died in the same accident and taken to the morgue, the brother's patient captured this image with his own camera and the picture has been seen around the world and has been authenticated by the research center in Chicago,Illinois

While I haven't seen the photo before, my first guess would be that it's a scene from a movie, though I have no idea which movie. The picture looks too well composed to be a casual snapshot. And whenever an email claims that something has been authenticated by a 'research center in Chicago,' while neglecting to mention which research center, you know that it's got to be a hoax.

The Commissar Vanishes — The Newseum presents The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs in Stalin's Russia.

Tall-Tale Postcards — The American Museum of Photography has a nice collection of William H. "Dad"�Martin's tall-tale photographs online. Martin made a fortune selling tall-tale postcards during the early twentieth century. He had a company called the Martin Post Card Company based in Ottawa, Kansas.

New Stealth Bomber — Here it is. The first unclassified photo of the new F-22 Stealth Fighter Bomber. Invisible not only to radar but also to the human eye. (Thanks to Darren McEwen for the picture).

He casts a long shadow — This photo of Dick Gephardt's shadow cast across an American flag was snapped today (Dec. 1) at a campaign rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It appeared on Yahoo News and is quickly spreading across the internet. Despite the suggestive nature of part of the shadow, one has to assume that it hasn't been photoshopped. It's one of those things that seems like a hoax, but actually isn't, much like the picture of the Jamie Oliver calendar that was circulating around recently. Thanks to Kentaro Mori for giving me a heads up about this.

The Naked Chef — Here's a picture of the 2004 calendar of Jamie Oliver (aka The Naked Chef). Note the suggestively placed piece of bread. This image originally appeared on the website of Boots, which is a British pharmacy. And it quickly attracted attention, at which point Boots cropped the image in order to remove the offending piece of bread. I can't find another picture of the calendar anywhere online to compare this picture to, but I'm assuming that the piece of bread must have been photoshopped in. Probably by a mischievous Boots employee.

Update 2 (11/17/03): David Emery reports that he was able to find the real version of the Jamie Oliver 2004 calendar, and it looks nothing like the fake version that appeared on the Boots website. Oh, and what I thought was a piece of bread was actually a brown paper bag that had been photoshopped.
Update 3 (11/18/03): David Emery has done some great sleuthing and discovered that the Jamie Oliver calendar being sold by Boots is absolutely real and unaltered. Boots sent him a full-size image of the calendar cover (which he was kind enough to forward along to me). It shows Jamie taking oranges out of a paper bag and peeling them. Full-size the image looks quite innocent, but shrunk down to thumbnail size, the position and shape of the paper bag becomes rather suggestive. Personally I think that whoever created that calendar must have been aware of the two ways of viewing that paper bag when they chose that image. It's an old advertising strategy: put a bit of subliminal (or not so subliminal) sexual imagery in an ad and watch the product fly off the shelf.

Ray Charles — Here's a hoax photo of Ray Charles that's going around. It's pretty stupid, actually, but then the words 'stupid' and 'hoax photo' seem to go together often. It may not even be photoshopped. It could just be a picture taken at the instant that he was pointing the mike away from himself for some reason. (Found on the German language Wohin Heute).

Lucky — Here's another image from the San Diego fires that seems to be too amazing to be real, but is actually totally genuine. It's circulating around with the caption 'lucky bastard' (enlarge it to see why this makes perfect sense). It was sent to me by Kentaro Mori of Liquito. I think that the photo was taken in the Scripps Ranch neighborhood of San Diego, though I could be wrong about that. According to the navy website which the picture comes from, the photo was taken from a Sea King helicopter by Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Michael J. Pusnik, Jr.

Is The Blood Red Water Real? — An environmental activism group named Sea Shepherd photographed and videotaped Japanese fishermen slaughtering sixty dolphins in a cove near Taiji, Japan. They posted the pictures of the slaughter on their website, thereby causing widespread outcry. But one of the pictures is also provoking debate of a different kind. It shows the water of the cove turned an almost neon red color because of the blood of the dolphins. People looking at this are wondering, can that possibly be real? Can the water really be that red? Or did Sea Shepherd, perhaps, tweak the colors in the picture via photoshop? I don't have the answer. In an accompanying videotape the water is definitely red, though not quite as red as in the picture. The debate has been raging on Metafilter, as well as a site named egullet.

Fire Scene — Here's a very cool picture of one of the San Diego fires. For a second I actually thought it was fake because it seemed weird that traffic was heading right into the fire. Plus the time stamp looked odd (it's stamped October 28, even though the picture was posted on the 27th, and the woman who posted it says it was taken on the 26th... maybe their camera has the wrong date). I thought maybe someone had pasted the bottom scene of the traffic together with the top scene of the smoke. But on second thought, I'm sure it's real. I can't see any sign of photoshopping. It was just the skeptic in me being too doubtful. (via J-Walk)

Plane Meets Truck — I received this image from 'Detective Kid' who wants to know if it's real or fake. I've been checking it out and can't see anything obviously fake about it. The picture has a watermark on it, that I can't read. It's something like 'erzool.com.' If anyone knows anything about the picture, let me know.
UPDATE: A solution to this photo comes from Jeffrey Schuh: "This photo is a national geographic photograph. The photo has been republished in 'The Photographs' coffee table book. (The one with the Afghan woman on the cover.) The plane photo is on page 50-51 and is captioned:
Sanarate, Guatemale 1976.
'On a rescue mission after an earthquake, a plane caught by a crosswind crashes. Moments earlier, Madden had landed on this same road; he took the photo through the window of his plane.'
I presume since it's a National Geo photograph/photographer, it is authentic...."

Pool Shark — Mark Allsop was kind enough to send along this photo of him and his kids on holiday in Australia. Thanks, Mark.

Indian Ghost, Part II — Kentaro Mori managed to unearth the source for that ghost photo that scared so many people in India (see below). Click images for larger versions.