Well, not me. But another photographer messed up big time.
According to this article in Photo District News, photographer Marc Feldman provided Getty Images with a fantastic shot of golfer Marc Bettencourt from a recent tournament, as the golfer held up his golf ball for all to see. It was a great shot, and Getty ran the photograph.
What Feldman didn’t tell Getty Images was that the photo was doctored. Specifically, Feldman used digital editing software to remove the caddy from behind Bettencourt’s arm, recropped the photograph, and re-submitted it.
Slick.
And he would have gotten away with it, had it not been for Dallas Morning News photo editor Guy Reynolds, who found what he thought were two different images of Bettencourt.
Here’s the first one.
And here’s the second one.
You can see the “editing” done behind Bettencourt’s left shoulder. And not a very good job of editing, I must say.
Needless to say, Getty Images was not impressed. They first had to send this out to everyone –
And then they did their own digital editing – that is, they cut Feldman from their roster of photographers.
Now someone can say, oh big deal, he trimmed a caddy out of the picture to make for a more visually appealing image. And it’s not like this hasn’t happened before. The iconic picture of the girl crying over the dead body during the Kent State massacre was altered because the poor girl had the audacity to actually stand in front of a pole, which made it look as if she was crying from being impaled in the head. That photo, both edited and unedited, still circulate today.
You want to edit a photo for artistic purposes? Great. But don’t turn around and submit it as an actual event to a news or photography source. You think editing a golfer’s caddy out of a picture is such a crime – think about this. What if that photographer edited a photo so that someone at a murder scene was digitally ” removed” or “added”? Accuracy is compromised. You just can’t do it. Ever.
Sources of information:
Photo District News – http://pdnedu.blogs.com/
Dallas Morning News – http://photographyblog.dallasnews.com/
Chuck The Writer 
Just stumbled across this story, and found a follow-up from the original guy in Dallas. Wondered what you thought of the new angle…
http://photographyblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/07/marc-feldman-checks-in-about-a.html
Thanks!
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Scott –
My thought is the same as the person who sends a joke e-mail to his buddy, and accidentally hits “send to all.” Maybe he accidentally sent both pictures, maybe he was just careless, maybe he’s just covering his tracks. I don’t know. What do you think?
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I think if it’s in that category (the “Send-to-all” category) then it’s an accident. *IF* that’s a believable story, about demonstrating PS to the golfer himself.
If there’s intent to deceive, throw the book at the guy. However, if it’s a brain cramp, then I have some sympathy for him, particularly since this is getting some attention, and I can see it going either way. “Feldman blackballed for life after defrauding Getty” is an interpretation that strikes me as harsh, whereas “photographer messes up” is something he can laugh about over a couple beers by next week.
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Scott –
I think that if it TRULY was an accident, and if he TRULY is repentant, he’ll hook on with another photo service. From what I understand, Feldman has been a professional photographer for many years. It just seems ponderous to me that he would have a brain cramp at that particular moment and then accidentally send both versions of the photo out.
As I said before, if he was doing it for artistic purposes – i.e., to enter the photograph in an art show – I could understand his motivations. But if you’re a photojournalist, you can’t do stuff like that. You just can’t.
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Sure, I agree with you. I have no basis to decide whether the “I was demo-ing to the golfer” is believable or not; it could be, as you say, a CYA story.
We can, however, attempt to gauge the “intent to deceive” factor. *IF* he was trying to present the doctored image as reality, he would presumably be smarter about it on two counts – one, it’s obviously photoshopped, and two, he also submitted the original. Both mistakes a rookie might make, but not someone with any level of experience.
Which brings us back to your original analogy, which is a good one. I know I have “Replied to All” by mistake, and I doubt anyone reading this hasn’t done it as well.
Brain cramps that don’t cause any actual repercussions are brain cramps we never find out about; it’s only the occasional public cramp that makes for blog fodder. I haven’t seen anyone truly pillory this guy yet, and it may turn out he deserves it, but who knows.
One could easily make the argument that if he’s careless enough to save the doctored image ANYwhere that MIGHT see light of day, he deserves to get sacked for that. But that’s stupidity, which is a lesser evil than fraud.
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Scott –
The one thing this photograph of Feldman does do is bring into question his entire body of work. If he digitally erased the caddy out of this picture, what about every other picture he’s ever taken? Do we now have to go back through his entire catalog and look for stray cloning marks or Gaussian blurs? And Feldman’s going to have to answer to that for the rest of his career, I think.
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