In February, the winner of the prestigious
World Press Photo of the Year award came under fire after allegations surfaced
that it had been significantly altered. The organization has stood by the
photo, but a forensic image analyst, Neal Krawetz, now claims his analysis
proves that it is a composite of multiple photos.
The photo in question, an image by Swedish
photographer Paul Hansen called "Gaza Burial," shows a group of men
carrying the bodies of two children killed in an airstrike through Gaza City.
According to the results of a forensic analysis published by ExtremeTech
yesterday, it might be a composite of three different photos spliced together
and then altered to illuminate the faces of the subjects. The photographer has
denied the allegations.
Krawetz, a computer scientist and author
who specializes in "non-classical computer forensics," blogged about
his reservations with the photo, which he saw after a friend sent him an
article on the controversy. By looking at the file's Photoshop save history,
the shadow placement in the image and an error-level analysis of the pixels in
the photo, Krawetz says he found that Hansen's image was significantly
manipulated--a controversial topic in documentary photography.
ExtremeTech wrote:
Basically, as far as we can surmise, Hansen took a series of photos — and then later, realizing that his most dramatically situated photo was too dark and shadowy, decided to splice a bunch of images together and apply a liberal amount of dodging (brightening) to the shadowy regions.
Hansen responded today in an interview with
news.au.com, denying that the image was a composite or in any way fraudulent.
He explained his process like this:
In the post-process toning and balancing of the uneven light in the alleyway, I developed the raw file with different density to use the natural light instead of dodging and burning. In effect to recreate what the eye sees and get a larger dynamic range.To put it simply, it's the same file - developed over itself - the same thing you did with negatives when you scanned them.
World Press Photo has previously defended
Hansen's work. Santiago Lyon, the director of photography at the Associated
Press and chairman of the 2013 contest jury, said in a press conference earlier
this year that "we are confident that the images conform to the accepted
practices of the profession" and that some images had been disqualified
from the competition based on alteration.
"Paul Hansen has previously explained
in detail how he processed the image. World Press Photo has no reason to doubt
his explanation," the organization stated to the Huffington Post UK today.
But they will be doing some forensic sleuthing of their own in response.
"However, in order to curtail further speculation - and with full
cooperation by Paul Hansen - we have asked two independent experts to carry out
a forensic investigation of the image file. The results will be announced as
soon as they become available."
(source:popsci)
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