Above: The breakdown of one of Edgar Martins’ images which ran in a recent edition of New York Times Magazine. The breakdown of this image – as well as many others from the essay – can be found on Photo District News.
Photo District News called out New York Times Magazine for a photo essay in their July 5th edition called “Ruins of the Second Gilded Age”. NYT has since removed the essay from their website and replaced it with this Editor’s Note, so unfortunately I can’t link to the original images. However, PDN has a complete breakdown of all the images, and as you can see photographer Edgar Martins got a little heavy handed with the clone tool. What I can’t understand is – why did he bother to risk his reputation by doing this? The things he cloned were small (Leaves? Electrical outlets? Seriously?) and really didn’t do much to visually enhance the images or make them more compelling. It looks to me like Martins might just be a touch OCD when it comes to symmetry in his photographs.
UPDATE July 9, 2009: Simon over at Bloggasm (Best! Blog! Name! Ever!) emailed me and sent the link to his interview with Adam Gurno – the Metafilter member who was the first to notice something fishy in the Martins photos. It is a great read on how just the everyday reader (or web surfer) can uncover Photoshop trickery. [read the interview] Thanks for submitting the link, Simon!
{ 1 trackback }
Comments on this entry are closed.