The online contest is over! Thanks to all who participated.
Friday challenge answer:
The Airplane crossing image is real. It shows Gibraltar Airport , where the runway insurrects with a road. The other two images have been manipulated. –
– The airplane that was Oscar Meyer wiener jet actually looks like this. Read the story of this fakery on the Museum of Hoaxes site.
– The crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine looks very different. See this fake debunked at http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/fauxphotos/, a very useful site documenting hoax photos and viral videos.
Friday challenge winner: Kylee Loebick
Lessons from the winners
– Google image captions to find credible pages, which will help you verify image authenticity. Yu Mao and Kelly Palmer both did this.
– Compare to other sources. Kylee looked at multiple pictures of the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 and saw that “all of the pictures from that specific flight show complete devastation and no pieces of aircraft that big.” See links to more information about this fake image above.
-Remember that photofakery predates Photoshop. Sammy Shugar commented on techniques used in historical photos in the Tuesday challenge.
Lessons from the librarian
Some participants relied on common sense and examining images closely. For example, Holly Zhang noticed that in the Tuesday challenge in the picture of President Obama “there is no space for the cigarette between the lips.” Unfortunately looking closely and using common sense does not always work. The last image in the Tuesday challenge seemed real to the participants, while it had been doctored and not too expertly: at a closer look one can see the body outline of Goebbels, who had been removed from the picture. This image is often used as an example of doctored images and can be found on many web pages. Googling the captions would have helped you find the information about the fakes featured on Tuesday and explanations of the techniques used.
In addition, there are a number of sites that debunk fake images:
About.com: Hoax Photos and Viral Images
Museum of Hoaxes: Photo Fakery
Hopefully this contest reminded you that, paraphrasing Richard Bach, you cannot always believe what your eyes are telling you. Use your common sense and your friend Google. Please remember that UC libraries have many databases offering access to reliable, high quality images – please check our Media online guide.
Once again, congratulations to our daily challenge winners:
Yu Mao
Sammy Shugar
Kelly Palmer
Kylee Loebick
Here is a flower for our winners, a rare and adorable Monkey Orchid. Is this picture real? You decide!
By Olga Hart
