Charles Apple

Here it is. What do you think:

I think it’s pretty clear this is Photoshopped. The big clue: The dog is in focus but the house in the background is out of focus. That tells us something about the shooter’s depth-of-field.

But then look at the jets. They’re nice and crisp.

What kind of lens would make the dog — maybe three feet away — and the jets — maybe a mile away — sharp but leave the house — perhaps 100 feet away — blurry? No kind that I know of.

Yet, this picture ran in National Geographic’s February 2010 issue as a reader-submitted picture.

The magazine published, in a recent edition:

[Reader William] Lascelles submitted a nicely composed picture showing a scruffy dog backed by jets inscribing trails in a blue sky. After he learned that it had been chosen for the magazine, Lascelles told our writer that frame was “a lucky shot.” He confirmed that statement for our researcher. When Senior Photo Editor Susan Welchman asked him, prior to publication, to verify the image with the next photo in his shooting sequence, Lascelles sent her another picture of the dog—head turned this time—with the same jets above.

National Geographic ran the picture on its “Your shot” page. Readers wrote to insist this has been manipulated. The photographer finally admitted it.

Find the retraction and explanation here.

The fabulous Craig Silverman blogged this last week over at Regret the Error.

—
UPDATE:

An exclusive for the blog: Here’s the original photo before it was altered:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 10:17 am and is filed under Magazine design, Photojournalism, Visual ethics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.