News agency Reuters is being accused of biased reporting after it was discovered that photographs released by the agency had critical elements such as daggers, blood, and injured soldiers cropped out. The story originally broke on Little Green Footballs over the weekend.

Here’s a photograph released by Reuters showing activists attempting to take an Israeli soldier hostage:

Inspection of the original photograph reveals that three important elements were cropped out of the photograph. The first is the second injured soldier in the upper right hand corner, the second is the knife being held by an activist, and third is the large pool of blood on the wooden railing.

Here’s another photograph released by Reuters:

From looking at the original photograph, we see that a knife was cropped out of this one as well:

Reuters is no stranger to controversy, as there have been quite a few cases where photographs were retracted, with the subjects ranging from Middle East conflicts to the recent volcano eruption in Iceland.

Reuters has responded to this latest controversy on their blog, saying:

A number of readers contacted us about this. At the top and bottom you can see our initial cropped versions on the left, and the full frame versions on the right.

The images in question were made available in Istanbul, and following normal editorial practice were prepared for dissemination which included cropping at the edges. When we realized that a dagger was inadvertently cropped from the images, Reuters immediately moved the original set, as well.

Reuters has also published a series of non-cropped photographs of the raid in a slideshow.

What are your thoughts on this controversy? Do you think the daggers were “inadvertently” cropped from the images, or is this a case of biased reporting?

(via Amateur Photographer)

It looks like Imagelogr, a new search engine for images, has gotten off on the wrong foot. Only weeks old, the service has sparked quite a response from photographers after it became clear that the service was offering copyrighted photographs for download without any links or attribution.

Their “about us” section states,

Imagelogr.com is an image & picture search engine. We try to index pretty much every picture & image currently available on the free internet. With our powerful search engine finding these images should be fairly easy.

The problem was, photographs that weren’t “free” were being indexed as well, including Flickr images marked “All Rights Reserved.”

After learning of the service, notable Flickr photog Thomas Hawk wrote a post on his blog today titled, “Is Imagelogr.com Trying to Be the Largest Copyright Infringer of All Time?“:

Imagelogr claims to be scraping the entire “free web” and seems to have hit Flickr especially hard, copying full-sized images of yours and mine to their own servers where they are hosting them without any attribution or links back to the original image in violation of all available licenses on Flickr. If people on Imagelogr want to they can manipulate your images, rotate them, see them at different sizes up to 300% and even download the images with a download button directly from the site. [...] The site currently boasts to be tracking over 24 *billion* (yes, billion with a B) images. If their numbers are true, this may in fact be the largest image grab in the history of Flickr.

A thread about the service was also created in the Flickr forums, but was quickly closed by the Flickr staff, since they felt that the thread was going down “Lynch Mob Road”.

Hours later, the service was taken offline, and was replaced with a simple message stating,

Imagelogr.com is currently offline as we are improving the website. Due to copyright issues we are now changing some stuff around to make people happy. Please check back soon.

We don’t know much about this service, and hadn’t heard of it prior to today’s events. Their domain name was registered last month, and details are so non-existant that it feels almost like a class project. However, the fact that they’ve indexed 24 billion photos seems to argue against that possibility.

When they come back online, you might want to type in your Flickr username to see if your photographs show up.

Image credit: Screenshot by Thomas Hawk

A banner on Andrew Romanoff’s Senate campaign website provoked a bit of an outrage from a minority group when people realized that it was digitally manipulated.

The original photo shows Romanoff, the Democratic candidate from Colorado, at a campaign kickoff.

The photo for the banner was tinted blue, and then had several people from other images spliced into it, presumably in order to make Romanoff look like he was surrounded by more followers. Some of the added people include an African American woman to the right of Romanoff, as well as a Latino American man towards the center of the banner. The photo changes caused some minorities to believe Romanoff was trying to appear like his supporters were more diverse.

The Photoshopped African American woman, Andrea Mosby, told reporters that she has no problem with the photo-tweak, since she supports Romanoff and was at the same rally.

Others disagree on principle. According to the Denver Post, Colorado minority leaders wrote to Romanoff’s campaign, expressing that they were “shocked, disturbed and outraged” that the campaign felt the need to manipulate an image to appear like he had more minority supporters. Some 25 people signed the letter that called the candidate’s integrity into question, saying:

“We are NOT random people to be moved around for aesthetic reasons…We are NOT political pawns to be used when convenient nor do we accept being manipulated and repositioned when it serves one’s political motives…The Photoshopping in of minorities is not acceptable and falls far short of the integrity we expect of candidates running for the US Senate.”

Romanoff’s campaign said that the banner was intended as a photo collage or montage of the event, designed by a volunteer to reflect the overall attendance at the campaign event.

Romanoff later removed the image from the site and issued an apology:

This decision and a description of it have caused offense. I regret that and have removed the montage from our website. I take offense at any suggestion that our campaign attempted to deceive anyone. That’s outrageous and false. I bring a lifetime of commitment to equality and opportunity, and I reject these attacks on my character. I am very proud of the diverse support we’ve already received and continue to earn every day.

(via Denver Post)

Danish-Norwegian artist Nina Maria Kleivan has come under fire for a series of photographs in which she dresses up her year-old daughter Faustina as some of history’s most evil figures. The series, titled “Potency“, has been shown in exhibitions around Europe, and is meant to explore the nature of evil.

Benito Mussolini

Adolf Hitler

Mao Zedong

Saddam Hussein

Idi Amin

Joseph Stalin

The Telegraph quotes Kleivan as saying,

We all have evil within us. Even small children are evil towards each other. Even my daughter could end up ruling Denmark with an iron fist. The possibility is still there. You never know.

Even though my generation doesn’t speak out about the war, silently our cultural circle sees Hitler as evil incarnate. But this is not a deliberate provocation, it calls for reflection. Even though comical, you’re not supposed to only laugh at these pictures. You need to contemplate them, ponder where this evil comes from.

While reaction to the series has been mixed, some groups have taken offense to the work. The head of the Canadian Jewish Congress is quoted as saying,

Surely, there’s a better way to explore evil than to throw a swastika on a baby.

What do you think of this series? Is it appropriate as art, or has the artist taken it too far?

(via Boing Boing)

Last year the Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition dealt with controversy when the winning photographer was stripped of his award for staging his photograph.

Now, there’s a new controversial decision by the organizers of the competition: a new rule bans entries from cameras with less than 10 megapixels:

Digital images must have been taken on a sufficiently high resolution camera – at least ten (10) million pixels, on the highest setting.

PhotoRadar notes that a finalist from a few years ago would have been barred from the competition under the new rules:

In 2007, American photographer Kari Post made it to the finals of the Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition at the Natural History Museum with a selection of prints entered in the Eric Hoskins portfolio category.

If she entered this year, she would be disqualified before some of her pictures, taken with a 6.1 megapixel Nikon D70, were even considered. A change to the rules in the competition (now the Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition) disallows photographers from entering photos taken with a camera with a sensor with fewer than 10MP.

“The worst part of it is that it’s discriminating against photographers who don’t have the most recent cameras,” she says.

The new rule bars even the professional Canon EOS 1D Mark II, since it only boasts a “meager” 8 megapixels.

The reason for the new rule was a redesign of the contest’s gallery at the National History museum. The gallery requires larger prints, and therefore the competition now demands higher resolution. What’s interesting is how this print requirement affected past competitions even when there wasn’t a rule. PhotoRadar reports,

[...] Colin Finlay, a spokesperson for the competition office, said, “In previous competition years, several images have had to be dismissed during the late stages of the competition due to their technical quality not being sufficient for the demands of large scale reproduction.”

That means images that could have won the competition based on artistic merit were actually dismissed for not having enough megapixels.

What are your thoughts on this new rule? Keep in mind that every current DSLR model offered has at least 10 megapixels.

(via Photoxels)

Back at the beginning of the year, Wired stirred up some fierce debate when it published an article titled, 5 Reasons to Ditch Your Digital SLR.

Unless you have a specific use that these cameras can’t meet, or you need the very highest level of performance only a Canon 1D or Nikon D3 can bring, you have no reason to buy a DSLR.

Today, they’re at it again with a new article titled, Do Mirrorless Cameras Spell the Death of DSLRs?.

[...] what does it mean for the DSLR, which has for years been the fastest growing sector of the camera market? A DSLR used to be the only way to go if you wanted a camera that had a big sensor and a reasonably responsive shutter. The other benefits, like interchangeable lenses, are arguably only there for the more serious. Take a look around you next time you’re in a tourist spot and you’ll see mostly sub-$1,000 SLRs with the kit zooms still on the front.

The argument is that the large sensors, small camera size, and interchangeable lenses on the newer cameras will steal all but the most serious photographers from the DSLR market. Their view is summed up nicely in the last sentence:

The DSLR won’t die. But it could become a niche product, and the specialist tool of the professional.

What do you think about this debate? Will DSLR cameras start to decline in popularity, or does Wired not know what it’s talking about?

Image credit: novoflex meets gf-1 by icedsoul photography .:teymur madjderey

Photographers have been buzzing about the Digital Economy Bill, which is expected to shortly become law in the UK. The controversy revolves around the vague provisions for “orphaned works”, which many claim will give the government control of licensing for any photograph deemed “orphaned” after a reasonable search for the owner has been conducted. In the section “Licensing of Orphan Works”, the bill reads,

The Secretary of State may by regulations provide for authorising a licensing body or other person to do, or to grant licences to do, acts in relation to an orphan work which would otherwise require the consent of the copyright owner.

The bill proposes an “orphan works register”, to which anyone can submit photographs they find on the Internet after completing the following steps:

(a) to carry out a reasonable search to find or, if necessary, to identify and find, the owner of the interest,
(b) after the search, to publish notice of the proposal to enter the interest in an orphan works register, in a way designed to bring the proposal to the attention of the owner of that interest, and
(c) to keep a sufficient record of the steps taken under paragraphs (a) and (b) and of the results of those steps.

Once in the register, the photographs can be licensed by the government and used for commercial purposes. Essentially, this means that any photograph found on the Internet can be licensed by the UK if the person who wishes to use the work cannot find the owner after a “reasonable” search.

Here’s some further reading:

• Simon Crofts: Undermining Digital Britain
• A Photo Editor: UK Close To Approving Orphan Works
• Boing Boing: Brits: write to your MP, get transparency on secret copyright treaty!
• The British Journal of Photography: Warning siren on Digital Bill
• Copyright Action: UK Gov nationalises orphans and bans non-consensual photography in public

Let us know your thoughts on this in the comments!

Image credit: Police guards by italpasta

About a month ago we reported that José Luis Rodriguez had come under fire after winning the prestigious Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year award. The winning photograph depicted a rare, Iberian wolf hopping a fence to reach food placed outside by the photographer, but rival photographers soon began to question whether the wolf was indeed a wild wolf.

After a month of investigation, Rodriguez has been stripped of the prestigious award and banned for life, in what some are now calling “the biggest scandal to ever hit the world of wildlife photography”. The winning image was selected from among 43,135 submitted from 94 countries.

A statement on the competition’s website states,

The judging panel looked at a range of evidence and took specialist advice from panel judges who have extensive experience of photographing wildlife including wolves. They also considered the responses to specific questions put to the photographer José Luis Rodriguez.

However, Rodriguez continues to deny that the wolf was a captive wolf.

(via Amateur Photographer)

We’re on a roll with controversial advertisements today. New York garment company Weatherproof has gotten the attention of the White House after illegally using a photograph of President Obama’s visit to the Great Wall of China on a billboard in New York City (41st St. and 7th Ave.)

While Weatherproof did pay the licensing fees to use the image from the The Associated Press, they didn’t ask for permission from the White House, which has a pretty strict policy of not allowing the President’s image to be used for commercial purposes.

It all started when the company’s president Freddie Stollmack recognized the coat in the photo, and had it confirmed by examining a high resolution version. After having an advertisement containing the image rejected by a few of NYC’s top newspapers, the company installed the billboard advertisement two days ago.

Since then, the White House has in fact contacted the company about the ad, and the company has agreed to take the ad down but — get this — in two weeks. In the end, Weatherproof is likely the big winner, having succeeded in generating a buzz with this publicity stunt.

(via A Photo Editor)

Image credit: Photograph by Brechtbug and used with permission.

Harry Potter actress Emma Watson recently appeared in a Burberry advertising campaign with her brother Alex, and one particular image in the series has created quite a hoopla. In the image above, it appears as through most of her right leg has been completely edited out of the photograph. When I first saw the image, I thought the leg was simply hidden behind her brother’s left leg, but the image continues to cause a stir around the web. Do you think this is an example of Photoshop taken too far?

Update: Matt Dixon left a comment that provides pretty convincing evidence that it’s not a Photoshop disaster after all. Here’s a behind-the-scenes video: