Do photographs tell the whole story? Photography Unit Do photographs tell the whole story?

A shark attack off the South African coast

That's the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. The image is unquestionably a fake, albeit a very good one. It's a composite of a U.S. Air Force photo of a helicopter during a rescue diver training session in San Francisco Bay and a still shot of a great white shark breaching the ocean surface by acclaimed underwater photographer Charles Maxwell.

Raising the Flag on Iowa Jima

The First Flag The patrol reached the top without incident and the flag was raised. However, this flag was too small to be seen easily from the nearby landing beaches.

Dangerous Camel Spider found in Iraq This camel spider secretes an anesthetic to numb the flesh of camels and eats their stomachs. The camels don’t notice until their intestines fall out. It can run up to 25 mph emitting a screaming/squealing noise.

Camel spiders reside in arid locales all over the world, including the southwestern United States. A typical specimen can grow to about the size of a child's hand, but, though they are known for being vicious predators, camel spiders are neither venomous nor a threat to human beings. For the record, they don't eat camels, either.

The Cottingley Fairies The photographs were taken in 1917 by Elsie Wright (16) and Frances Griffiths (10), two young cousins living in Cottingley, England.

Elsie was an extremely gifted and accomplished artist. She borrowed her father's camera and took the photos behind the family house. When her father developed the pictures, he thought they were fake, but her mother was convinced they were real.

Some photography experts of the day examined the photos and declared them to be genuine but the Kodak laboratories refused to authenticate them, stating that there were many ways to get such faked results. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a popular article about fairies featuring the pictures taken by Elsie and Frances.

In the pictures and prints available today, the fairies look flat, with lighting that does not match the rest of the photograph, as if they were paper cut-outs. It has been claimed that this is because the originals were of poor quality and needed retouching and that this is the reason the originals were first seen as convincing. In 1982, they admitted to faking the photographs with paper cutouts mounted on hat pins. "I never even thought of it as being a fraud - it was just Elsie and I having a bit of fun and I can't understand to this day why they were taken in - they wanted to be taken in." said Frances in a 1982 TV interview on Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers.

A Lasting Effect The Cottingley Fairies are recurring characters in the comic book series Proof. Two 1997 films, Fairy Tale: A True Story, starring Peter O'Toole and Harvey Keitel, and Photographing Fairies with Ben Kingsley, were based on this event.

Typical New Yorkers This picture appears to show 5 New Yorkers relaxing during the 9/11 attacks. "It's possible they lost people and cared, but they were not stirred by it." "The young people in Mr. Hoepker's photo aren't necessarily callous. They're just American."

“We were in a profound state of shock and disbelief, like everyone else we encountered that day.” “I am a third-generation native New Yorker, who knows and loves every square inch of this city, as did her ancestors before her.”

Remember… Photographs can be manipulated. You might not know the context of the picture. You might not know what happened just before or just after the picture.

What affects do photographs have on a society?

PhotoShopped Pictures

How can you manipulate a picture? Digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken.

Photographers themselves staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring.

How can you alter a picture?