Bloggers poke fun at questionable Castro photos

Posted on Fri, Aug. 18, 2006

Bloggers poke fun at questionable Castro photos
Technology makes it easy to alter photos, but bloggers are quick to
criticize pictures they find amiss
BY JOSEPH TARTAKOFF
jtartakoff@MiamiHerald.com

Fidel Castro is still alive -- chatting with Venezuelan President Hugo
Chávez in a video shown this week. But that hasn't stopped bloggers from
speculating that earlier photos, the first released since Castro's
illness, were doctored.

While the debate might seem moot -- since few are questioning the
authenticity of the Chávez and Castro video -- the frenzy over the
Castro photos points to the ease with which digital photos can be
manipulated and then widely disseminated over the Internet.

Kenny Irby, the visual journalism group leader at the Poynter Institute,
a journalism think tank, said pictures have always been tweaked but the
advent of digital photography has made the doctoring a lot easier.

''These practices were far more laborious and cumbersome,'' he said.
``Now, it's seamlessly done by a click of the mouse.''

Throughout the week, bloggers have questioned many of the elements in
the original Castro shots, which were released Sunday, and some have
even tried their own hand at transforming one of the images.

ONLINE CONTEST

Community website MiamiBeach411.com opened a contest Monday allowing
users to manipulate a photo showing a rosy-toned Castro holding up a
copy of Cuba's Communist newspaper, Granma. The creator of the best
image wins a ticket to Disney World. One entrant placed a copy of Maxim
magazine in Castro's hands; others came up with more devilish versions.

With the surge in blogging, thousands of online commentators jump on
many photos in the mainstream media that seem slightly amiss.

Earlier this month, for example, the Little Green Footballs blog
revealed that a Reuters stringer had doctored a photo of Beirut by using
software to make the smoke over the city appear more intense.

Bloggers also seized on a photo montage, published June 25 in El Nuevo
Herald, the Spanish-language sister paper of The Miami Herald, that
combined two shots, making it seem that Cuban police were ignoring
prostitution.

''Blogs have really put the mainstream media under a microscope,'' said
Jim Romenesko, who runs the media blog Romenesko. ``Every step is being
watched and being criticized.''

Irby of the Poynter Institute said one red flag on both the Lebanon and
Castro photos is that neither was taken by an accredited photographer.

Indeed, when the Associated Press distributed the first shots of Castro
recuperating from his surgery, it attached a disclaimer that the AP
''cannot verify the authenticity or the date when these photographs were
shot.'' Santiago Lyon, the AP's director of photography, said in an
interview that his agency was simply being cautious.

But bloggers said the tagline was possible evidence that the AP thought
the photos might have been tampered with.

Even White House Press Secretary Tony Snow described one picture as
''the cheesy Photoshop picture'' to reporters.

No pixel on the first Castro photos was overlooked. Bloggers noted that
there was an odd line between Castro's hand and the paper, that Castro's
facial lesions were missing and that Castro appeared to be wearing the
same Adidas jacket -- of the Cuban Sports Federation -- he wore in 2002
when Jimmy Carter visited the island.

''The Adidas jacket appears to have weathered the more than four years
since then remarkably well,'' a blogger at www.cigarenvy.com wrote
Monday. ``Perhaps he doesn't wear it very often. Or perhaps he takes
exceptionally good care of it.''

Experts in Adobe Photoshop, the dominant imaging software, had their
takes, too.

Ken Milburn, the author of Digital Photography: Expert Techniques, said
there were definite signs of tweaking in the Castro photo, but nothing
that would question its authenticity.

For example, he said it seemed that the whites of Castro's eyes had been
whitened.

''People's eyes don't look like that when they're 80 years old. Most
people's eyes don't look like that way when they're 22. That's one of
the basic retouching techniques,'' Milburn said.

LOOKING GOOD

Richard Quindry, a Photoshop artist in Lansdale, Penn., said it was
normal for photographers to try to make their clients look as good as
possible. For example, he said Castro's beard looks darker in a photo of
Castro with his hand on his chin than in the other shots. By pushing on
the beard, though, it would seem denser and thus darker.

''People might be doing things to make him look a little better, but it
doesn't mean that the photo is an outright fake,'' he said. ``It doesn't
mean that the White House press corps wouldn't do the same thing for Bush.''

David Friend, a former photography director at Life magazine and author
of the forthcoming book, Watching the World Change, noted that many
governments doctor photos of leaders.

''The Soviets were especially good at it,'' he said. ``There was a
cosmonaut who fell out of favor, and he was extracted from the
background of pictures of the Soviet leadership.''

But he cautioned that the accusations -- especially on the Web --
sometimes turn out to be false.

''There are a lot of armchair conspiracy theorists with time on their
hands,'' Friend said.

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