The Fake Snow Leopard: Photomontage Spread Around the World
alpinemag.com
alpinemag.com
> News and media from around the world stole my images and published them with their own meaning. They did not ask me if they were edited. They interpreted them in their own way and spread them around the world. They told their followers that they were not edited. This is untrue, I always edit my images.
> In September-October, I traveled to Nepal, took photos, edited them, and posted them on my Facebook Page to my 2000 friends and 1100 followers. The story behind this series is true, all of the images are taken by me. I did in fact walk 103 miles to take those images. I gave permission to a select few places to share them. My intent for the entire series was to raise awareness of snow leopard conservation. I sold a little over 50 prints and donated $787.50 to the Snow Leopard Trust.
BTW you can do that too by drinking one of the best Vodka's i ever had:
So you've never had a better mixture of 60% H2O and 40% ethanol? Because that's what's left after 4x distillation followed by filtration, as claimed in the description.
I'm always baffled by people swooning over "good vodka". You're drinking industrial alcohol, diluted with distilled water! There's no flavor left.
Maybe you just have bad taste buds, i am baffled by people who don't taste the difference, an it's probably because you drink vodka that is made with distilled water.
The Vodka that you said is one of the best you've ever had is
"Bei dessen Herstellung wird bestes Dinkel Getreide 4-fach destilliert."
I had actual vodka made from aldehyde free HPLC grade dry alcohol and deionized water. (Remained after some cleaning of things.)
That thing literally has no taste and it's both smooth and burning sharp at the same time.
The other vodkas tend to have sugars and esters in the mix. You can detect them using a classic test.l, which shows how much the marketing about distillation process is worth. They taste completely differently - depending on brand as well.
Edit: Read the disclaimer myself. She seems to defent seeing a snow leopard, as she also has a picture of its paw up in the same collection. Make of that, as you will.
They are also lying by omission and selective description.
In https://kittiyapawlowski.com/snow-leopard-series there is no mention whatsoever that images are fake collages.
On https://kittiyapawlowski.com/news-publications/published-in-... and https://kittiyapawlowski.com/ there is
- no mention that these image files are not photographs
- "Kittiya Pawlowski is a photographer and artist that uses visual storytelling" may be technically true but is lying by omission
- there is no clear description of images as misleading collages
She clearly articulates herself as an artist and appears to enter many fine art photography competitions, never attempting to pass her work as unmanipulated to her peers. Photo manipulation and composites is extremely common in fine art photography (as well as many other photography fields, ie. landscape), and the act is never questioned when the work is hanging in a gallery.
The narrative is part of the art. An artist does not have to put a disclaimer on their own website saying their work is not manipulated, they can also tell whatever STORY they want next to it. If anything how convincing her narrative and photos are speaks volumes to her ability as an artist.
Do not claim that collages or manipulations are not 'photographs' or that she didn't 'taken them'. She took every photo used, that act alone makes her a photographer. What constitutes a photograph can not be distilled to 'this photograph was manipulated so it is not a photograph'.
Take some of this anger and direct it at publications that stole her photos and published them as something they were not with no input from the artist. It is the medias job to research what they publish, it is not an artist's job to to dictate how someone interprets their art.
She might never explicitly claim that, but the page is clearly written in photojournalist style. A photo of snow leopard tracks with coordinates, talking about and documenting the process of her search and how she finally managed to snap a photo of the leopard.
Reading that page I certainly would think the images are unaltered (i.e. not stitched together).
That is not to say that the publications that took the photos were in the right. But the false impression is not entirely on them.
You should consider developing your critical thinking skills.
Instead of belittling them, do you have examples of things which they could have picked up to imply that the images were altered?
What was displayed before was "WORLDWIDE SHIPPING AVAILABLE FOR PRINTS" and only on general print page disclaimer was mentioned.
And individual pages were trying to pass fake collages as "Photography by Kittiya Pawlowski" - see https://web.archive.org/web/20221127122923mp_/https://kittiy...
There's enough doubt here to wonder if she even made the trip or took any photos of a leopard at all.
Also worth noting that her own website, registered in July of 2022, has posts backdated to April and March of 2021, which is strange to say the least.
> if she even exists as the person she claims to be
Now you are simply being mean for no reason. There is evidence that she has been submitting work under thus name for several years and nowhere does she claim anything about this linking to any real world identity.
https://annualphotoawards.com/winners/apa-2020/fine-art/
> Nobody who takes photography seriously as a profession
Which she doesn't. It is a side hobby, one which you have decided it is OK to bully her for because she isn't up to your professional standards.
Seriously, take a moment, pretend this isn't a stranger on the internet but one of your friends and have some fucking empathy.
The french magazine itself suspected that the photographer may not exist as a real person by that name. Given the many inconsistencias and empty spots in numerous parts of their work biography and the present circus, it's far from being "just mean" to speculate the same.
>Which she doesn't. It is a side hobby, one which you have decided it is OK to bully her for because she isn't up to your professional standards.
Im not bullying anybody. This is casual discussion here on this site, not emails or messages sent directly to this photographer.
What's more, whether a person does photography as a hobby or professionally doesn't change the very definitely gross dishonesty of presenting their work as something it wasn't to multiple major organizations, selling it to numerous buyers under that strongly implied presentation and then only later very vaguely admitting to some editing and some composite work (without specifying that these shots were composites even though they very clearly were) only because she was called out for it in extremely specific detail by a professional magazine's analysis.
So yes, I repeat, perfectly calmly, that this was indeed gross dishonesty. If you were one of the people who saw her work presented on Saatchi Art for over $1500 per print (a damn good price for a photo by a recent unknown), and then paid for it because your reading of her original narrative very strongly encouraged you to think of the photos as real and very unique nature photography examples, I doubt you'd have so much "fucking empathy" either.
For those of us who take photography seriously enough to try being as honest as possible about its provenance and disclosing how our editing process works for the sake of sustaining respect among the public for photographers, things like this self-serving photographer's implicit bullshittery are simply annoying. AI is already letting people simulate images with increasing accuracy and pass them off as real. Someone very publicly being mendacious by more traditional means doesn't help that for others who still want to have their hard-won profession taken seriously still.
Yes.
> The french magazine itself suspected that the photographer may not exist as a real person by that name. Given the many inconsistencias and empty spots in numerous parts of their work biography and the present circus, it's far from being "just mean" to speculate the same.
I think the article author is engaging in the exact same clickbait online bullying. They emailed asking for higher resolution copies, but either didn't bother to ask her if the photos were manipulated or decided to not include her response.
> For those of us who take photography seriously enough to try being as honest as possible about its provenance and disclosing how our editing process works for the sake of sustaining respect among the public for photographers, things like this self-serving photographer's implicit bullshittery are simply annoying. AI is already letting people simulate images with increasing accuracy and pass them off as real. Someone very publicly being mendacious by more traditional means doesn't help that for others who still want to have their hard-won profession taken seriously still.
If you actually want to help improve the culture around provenance disclosure, bullying minor artists is not a good way to do that.
>If you actually want to help improve the culture around provenance disclosure, bullying minor artists is not a good way to do that.
You're right. bullying minor artists isn't a good thing to do for fostering a good artistic culture in this broad space. However, calling out artists who tacitly or even plainly lie to multiple organizations and private buyers for monetary gain is a very different thing. Giving those a free pass because they're supposedly amateurs definitely doesn't help anyone or anything honest. I made my reasoning for it very clear previously.
So if you register a new domain name, you have to go back and edit your site's publication dates to be on or after the date in your whois record? lol?
But that's not what the record indicates. You are confusing the concepts of a site and a domain name. A name points to a site. A site can exist before a name is registered.
It looks like her site used to be hosted at studiokittiya.com[1] which was registered in 2020.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20211218023642/https://studiokit...
The appeal to a "journalist" label (or lack thereof) is a shallow defense that does not stand up to any informed critique.
Artists who use the language of photographic representation to present fictional scenes would do themselves a huge favor by being transparent about it. Whether disclosed in advance or afterward (for example in satire), it's essential to being taken seriously as an artist, and not just an everyday boring faker. There is certainly nothing inherently artistic, interesting, or special about using software to manipulate the objects within the frame of a photo. Anyone can do it, just like anyone can take a snapshot with a camera.
And of course anyone can call themselves an artist and do whatever they want. But it's also true that anyone can critique their work. It's all fair game.
I'm very wary of any claims abut what artists "should" do.
There's good art, bad art, wise art, dumb art. Declaring that anyone who picks up a camera is implicitly agreeing to be bound by this kind of stricture.
Outsider art is a thing. Most of it is terrible, some of it breaks new ground. But I wouldn't say any of it is "doing art wrong" because they took the outsider approach.
If anyone is trying to impose strictures, it is the comments above who try to declare criticism off-limits because there was not a "journalist" label or something.
Simply faking an animal portrait is not groundbreaking or "outsider." It's been done, and it's boring.
Lying to non-photographers is also lying.
> An artist does not have to put a disclaimer on their own website saying their work is not manipulated, they can also tell whatever STORY they want next to it.
They presented it as real and were fine with it presented as real by others and selling photos as real until they were caught.
See https://kittiyapawlowski.com/news-publications/published-in-...
Had
> Member of the World Photography Organization since 2016
in footer.
Had
> Help fund Kittiya's next photography expedition to Antarctica
in sidebar.
The actual result is that every publicity has that text, and people just ignore it.
> A lot of edits are about approximating perceived reality rather than deception.
I agree with the first, but disagree with the second.
Anyway, another interesting thing is that many cell phones have a filter by default that removes skin imperfections, so now almost all photos by non professionals are "photoshoped" by default.
> Since I have received death threats for all of this, I have taken down my social accounts.
How do people get from seeing a picture of a snow leopard to sending death threats? Are they just trolls who jump on to the case du jour to send threats to people? Is there a super hardcore competitive snow leopard photography scene where the stakes are high and the people are super invested?
Longer answer: People (especially younger folks) tend to be insecure. That's why she did what she did, and why people are in such high dudgeon about it.
Myself, I don't really care. I like snow leopards, but haven't seen any (even at a zoo). I cannot imagine being famous (without the monetary rewards). That's one of the things about the Internet. It's possible to be famous; with all the downsides, and none of the upsides.
[0] https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/286/884/7de...
See language used by gamers in competitive online games, especially team ones (CoD and LoL are example of games famous for toxic user base)
Sadly, this also follows existing class, race, and gender status levels. If you’re an attractive white guy from an affluent background you are more likely to skate away from something like this without consequences. The further off you are from that, the more likely you are to encounter some sicko who thinks they’re putting you in your proper place.
Social media makes all of that worse because it provides instant gratification for everyone joining the pile-on and it allows them to feel like part of a large group even if they’re a small percentage of the total population.
If you are a white guy you are less likely to skate away without consequences because it is possible to freely attack white men, while people are much more sympathetic to women.
Once someone has been positively categorized as belonging to the outgroup¹, people love to really get their kicks in. Doxx cheaters! Punch nazis! Get those groomers! Everything is acceptable towards the outgroup.
DMCA (Copyright) Complaint to Google
SENDER Kittiya [Private] US
Sent on November 25, 2022 COUNTRY: US RECIPIENT Google LLC [Private] Mountain View, CA, 94043, US
SUBMITTER Google LLC Re: Unknown NOTICE TYPE: DMCA Copyright claim 1
KIND OF WORK: Unspecified
DESCRIPTION The photographs of the mountains and snow leopards which can be viewed on my website at the URL below.
ORIGINAL URLS: https://kittiyapawlowski.com/prints
ALLEGEDLY INFRINGING URLS: https://alpinemag.com/fake-snow-leopard-photomontage-spread-...
Edit: the reasons it is abuse is because this is fair use. https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explai...
Fair use exception allows for use of copyrighted material for the purpose of criticism.
No other anrticles are complained about by this “photographer” that use these images only the single article that accuses her of fraud.
They're using the images only as much as is required to debunk them being photos they're believed to be.
If you can't refer to something you're trying to discuss our debunk it makes it difficult to do so, does it not? I'd call their use here "evidence" or something along those lines.
If they were presenting the images as their own or for artistic viewing purposes, I could see her argument, but they're not, they're trying to start a conversation about how they're not what they appear or claim to be.
If the photographer misrepresented them then yes it probably if fair use. However it's probably more grey than that, although may still be fair use. It's complicated.
However, if we take her statement at face value, I can completely see why someone who is now (potentially) the victim of an internet pile-on and death threats would want to use any means necessary to make that stop.
Also for the criticism fair use exception to copyright to apply, the criticism actually doesn’t have to be correct. Rather it just has to be criticism.
The DMCA also isn’t meant to be used to stop a pile on or protect people from criticism that is leading to death threats. It has a narrow use and all of this drama around it doesn’t affect whether or not this is fair use or not.
Also given that we know the photographer misrepresents things are we sure there are real death threats? Basically she is now the victim and blaming the accuser while also trying to silence the accuser. It is all so drama filled.
As another commented has said, the correctness of the pursuit doesn't really matter; it may be that the debunking actually finds here correct and "innocent", as I say; you can't discuss a subject without referring to it.
As for other people misrepresenting the photographs; I don't have a strong opinion about the whole thing; but, her statements, very clearly, in my opinion avoid or skirt around the truth; it very, very clearly omits detail.
There also some sugar coating of terminology; I'm not photographer, or artist, but I consider the statement "this is / is not edited" to mean something very different to "this is / is not a composite".
As someone who likes to provide detail, and not leave ambiguity when I describe my work, I find it quite jarring to read her descriptions; the wording is chosen carefully to avoid saying what is much easier to say, were it not done in a roundabout way.
"I found a pile of cash behind the living room wall" is much more to the point and clear than "I was redecorating my living room last week, and I found what I'd always been looking for".
There is never a situation that I think it's reasonable or fair for pile-ons death threats or any other kind of aggression to occur over something like this, it's unacceptable; however, regards misrepresenting her work, I firmly believe that position to be true given the evidence presented.
That said, this is just my opinion, and I make no comment on whether "misrepresenting" in itself is or is not an issue, just that I believe it _is_ misrepresented (intentionally).
If you think someone is lying, or ruining your reputation, that is what libel laws are for, not copyright.
[Ianal]
Because the DMCA explicitly does not shield you from criticism of your work. The law was written exactly in such a way that you are allowed to use copyrighted materials in order to critique them.
Using the DMCA process to take down criticism is DMCA abuse.
The article presents and excellent and very detailed case for how the photos are doctored all over the place. It's obvious and easy to see once pointed out. I can't at all imagine how it's so hard to believe.
This combined with a bunch of other odd details makes her case very suspicious. Given how much her original narrative implied fairly pure nature photography and NOT artistic composite creations, what this photographer did was dishonest in a very straightforward sense. The dishonesty becomes all the more obvious when you realize that until she was called out by a detailed analysis, she freely let sites for such entities as Saatchi Art, the U.S Embassy in Nepal, Animal Planet and the Times of London, share, claim and think that her photos were essentially nature shots with modest editing and no more. Not a peep, and she even made sales.
It was only after this individual was called out by a very specific media analysis that suddenly "News and media from around the world stole my images and published them with their own meaning. They did not ask me if they were edited. They interpreted them in their own way and spread them around the world."
And then up go the DMCA claims against the same sites that had previously shared her photos approvingly withuot being asked to take them down then (especially petapixel)
She seemed to have no problem with any of that as long as her original blog post and all it strongly implied were believed.
https://thecurrent.educatorinnovator.org/resource/when-image...
If what she presented was a "narrative" for a specific audience, I think that's fine. Sort of like literary fiction vs non-fiction story writing. We have historical fiction where we mix past and present real and fake. I don't see why a conceptual artists can't do the same with their photography/art --unless they were completely deceiving their audience for manipulation or monetary gain, i.e. fraud.
On the other hand it seems people are using her images without permission and passing them as authentic—which if we’re talking about transgressions, would be worse.
It is fine as long as it presented as historical fiction.
> unless they were completely deceiving their audience for manipulation or monetary gain, i.e. fraud.
They were at least deliberately deceiving their audience (though technically without stating demonstrably false statement - nevertheless they were lying)
The bigger problem to me is other people swiping her art, not confirming and not attributing it —simply using her art.
They had no trouble with selling collages as real photos.
Here they are providing (compelling) evidence the photos are manipulated, but using that to imply that that manipulation was done to deceive. There is no evidence of that.
So she didn't explicitly say they were manipulated photos (initially), but she also didn't say they weren't.
The people at fault in this whole saga are the publications that published the photos without permission or checking their veracity and the author of this article who is suggesting malicious intent without evidence.
This article, while well researched and presented, just feels like gatekeeping by someone with a personal grudge.
As a society we really need to step back from the need to attack first.
Images are highly misleading, no actual snow leopards are in places like this.
Description heavily suggests that this are real photos.
(at least right now, site is being edited, they just added disclaimer and made their FB page private)
And this is case of being deliberately misleading. Note that they not claimed that it was malicious!
I mean I didn’t explicitly say it wasn’t a Ferrari, you inferred it was.
Pretty sure that doesn’t fly under most laws.
Publications are under extreme stress as is with few people to fact check, with only a few exceptions.
So at the very least both parties in the wrong here, and some of it is systemic of the way we do things.
I do agree we shouldn’t immediately “hate” or “attack” ofcourse.
The photographer clearly states in her website that all of her photos are edited in some way or another (see 'Disclaimer'):
https://kittiyapawlowski.com/about-kittiya
Providing the originals would also make it trivial to pass it through https://fotoforensics.com/ to carry out a more robust detection of doctoring of the images.
https://fotoforensics.com/analysis.php?id=282efc0801ef0a8a50...
The results are for you to judge.
In other words, it's mostly only good for detecting if a JPEG (with compression artefacts) was edited and saved to another JPEG, although even then you can work around it to some degree by saving at similar chroma and compression qualities if you know what you're doing.
https://web.archive.org/web/20221101125244/https://kittiyapa...
>Squinting through my camera’s telephoto lens, I noticed something in the shadow of Mount Pumori. At first I thought it was a rock, but it was exactly what I was looking for.
In that way her description would still reflect reality. Or are you claiming she didn’t photograph a snow leopard?
I am claiming that her descriptions are at least highly misleading and apparently formed to technically avoid stating false info, while lying.
The only relevant question you have to ask yourself is whether she (herself) presented herself as a journalist. If not then this is all a bit weird to accuse her of anything.
Obviously artists can use photo montages. And obviously artists don't even have to disclose that anywhere. The art can stand for itself.
After reading the article, which was pretty blunt, I was trying to figure out whether she had been forced to add a disclaimer of sorts (because had that been there initially, I would have assumed it would have been mentioned in the article). I guess her work went 'viral' and now people are accusing her of being dishonest in a way that (again, I assume!) she (most likely!) didn't set out to be.
At least that was my take. I could be completely wrong and she could have set out to manipulate the entire world - but I'd prefer to give her the benefit of the doubt. Hanlon's razor and all that :-)
So this controversy is silly. There is no lie to expose.
However, and importantly, she only added the disclaimer after having suffered from the backlash:
Check for yourself:
No statement about 'composites' on this version from 4 days ago:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221127010418/https://kittiyapa...
I am not convinced by her explanation either. It was never clear they were composites.
Again, going to her original publication: https://kittiyapawlowski.com/snow-leopard-series
I find the whole story misleading at best: having the 'composite' (fake) images next to captions explaining that this is a snow leopard at 17,014 ft (5185 meters) is dishonest.
She thought she could get away with it but backtracked a few days later after it got out of hands.
We don't know when this first disclaimer was orignially published / added though.
And I would let people make their own decision whether they think her publication is misleading or not:
https://kittiyapawlowski.com/snow-leopard-series
edit: her disclaimer also reads like it was more reactive rather than precautionary: "I never stated my images were not edited anywhere".
Does she deserve death threats? It is responsible to post a "debunking" article without actually reaching out to the artist to ask?
I consider the "journalists" who wrote this article to be far more lacking in ethics than the artist who posted these photos.
It does not contain that disclaimer. So, unless it was moved from another part of the website, there was no disclaimer before the article was published.
But the earliest entry for the contact page (27th November) is the same as right now: https://web.archive.org/web/20221127010417/https://kittiyapa...
So it's unclear when the disclaimer was added.
Naively looking at what you see there and taking it for gospel very likely leads to both false positives and negatives. I think the assumption that you can just take any image, upload it to fotoforensics.com and know whether it's fake is dangerous.
Nevertheless, on https://kittiyapawlowski.com/snow-leopard-series there is no mention whatsoever that images are fake collages.
Images are highly misleading, no actual snow leopards are in places like this.
Also, even disclaimer is misleading and not making clear that many images are heavily faked. Not just colour balanced but altogether merge of multiple different photos.
That is just lying from side of that artist ("photographer" is misleading here).
At the same time she tries to appear as if she is some celebrated artist (mentioned by National Geographic etc.)
She seems to be have chosen ambiguity as her mode of communication which is troublesome.
Note also https://web.archive.org/web/20221127122923mp_/https://kittiy... selling fake collages as "Photography by Kittiya Pawlowski"
Footer has also
> Member of the World Photography Organization since 2016
and
> Help fund Kittiya's next photography expedition to Antarctica
I am not saying there is nothing there, just that malice is not proven and someone has wasted a lot of time refuting what has not been explicitly claimed. I would buy a print if I like, the price was right and especially if money went to a good cause. If anything, I would want the close up one to be brightened/de-hazed for my living room, even though nature doesn't always look like that.
Certainly the hair "lock" to me looks a lot more like a strap of a bag tied up or something than hair.
Also packed snow shapes can change quite significantly in days if there's wind and or significant snowfall: obviously the mountain rock topology won't change, but in most of the cases in the article the lettered points (to me at least) appear to be packed snow mounds more than snow on rocks (although the backdrop one looks more rock-based).
Edit: I would say however that I would agree "what is a snow leopard doing that high in the snowline?: there's unlikely to be prey there".
>>As to whether snow leopards are likely to be seen on glaciers, Vincent Munier, a snow-leopard specialist, is categoric – the answer is no.
But from her site:
>I am simply a 24-year-old girl that has a 9-5 job, likes to take/edit photos, and tries to raise awareness of conservation and help our planet. Since I have received death threats for all of this, I have taken down my social accounts.
It was maybe just to have a cool photo...but that is unacceptable behavior from the "social" community.
A reminder of why it's not a good idea to jeopardize one's credibility: It's hard to re-attain.
That is not cheating in a photo competition.
>>At first I thought it was a rock, but it was exactly what I was looking for.
https://kittiyapawlowski.com/snow-leopard-series
That's not ok, but anyway, no big deal. She will just have a hard time to re-establish herself as a serious Nature-Photographer.
Did that really happen, though?
Yes, it's the internet and there are lots of crazy people out there, but on the other hand "I've been threatened" is a quick and easy way for trying to erase/blur things you'd prefere not to be inspected any closer.
Maybe she was gambling. If nobody had noticed this fake, this could have been a HUGE thing and a start into another lucrative career, maybe get an award or two. After all there are these once in a lifetime shots and people take them and it's a big thing. And you might look up to those and hope for your personal shot of a lifetime and be tempted to help yourself a bit...
Perhaps you should reconsider before jumping on internet smear campaigns.
She lied about that picture and tried to deceive viewers into believing everything happened that way.
Why should I trust her when she says she received threats?
Sadly there are many people willing to spam death threats with zero credibility or as a "joke".
Just because someone only engaged in one part of the internet bullying that is happening here and didn't send the threats themselves, doesn't excuse responsibility for them. Just helping foment the hostility makes you somewhat culpable for the inevitable death threats that come with that hostility.
On the other hand someone posting here comments pointing out that they were lying is not responsible for idiots elsewhere posting death threats. And it is not bullying or "helping foment the hostility".
Many animals do. Chamois and tahr are two that I've observed doing so, and have been frequently documented doing so.
Sure, there's no prey on a snow covered alpine pass for a leopard.
And there's no grazing on a snow covered alpine pass for a chamois either.
But _there_ is food on the other side of that pass. Hence why it's worth the walk. And why do they use the pass? Same reason humans do, minimise energy expenditure by crossing at the lowest point.
https://kittiyapawlowski.com/about-kittiya
Disclaimer she added after she was found to be cheater.
Hell, Ansel Adams is a cheater by that definition - he made “color” photos by tinting black and whites by hand (in the 20s, before developing his signature style)
One thing is slightly touch colors, other thing is completely messing with objects in photo, if you don't see difference between these two approaches it's difficult to discuss it.
Some photography books aimed at beginners even suggest editing in more dynamic skies into photos.
It's a matter of style if not anything else. Some photographers will accept only what comes out of camera, others will take more liberties with their work. It's not like any fake claims are made here.
>> Detailed perusal reveals a ‘superfluous’ lock of hair that doesn’t match the rest of the young woman’s hairstyle. Undeniable proof the image has been manipulated.
Is it really undeniable proof? I feel like there are possible explanations for what we're seeing.
I don't know what to think. I don't have a stake in this, but it is quite common for documentaries to take some real liberties with the information they present.
>>Squinting through my camera’s telephoto lens, I noticed something in the shadow of Mount Pumori. At first I thought it was a rock, but it was exactly what I was looking for.
https://kittiyapawlowski.com/snow-leopard-series
Not faking something is as important for a Nature-Photographer as it is for a Journalist, otherwise you loose any credibility.
Just to name a few reasons for it that come to mind:
-The original resolution is wayyy bigger than what you see online. When you go from 300Mpx (eg. a panorama) down to 2 - 10 mpx and add compression, it will hide most of the artefacts.
-better lenses means they have less distortion and sharpness problem at the edge of the frame. Makes it easier to blend different pictures together seamlessly
-raw files editing allows a lot more modification to the colors without degradation or leaving traces. You are effectively changing the choices that the camera makes when it creates the colors. There is no difference between changing the color temperature in the camera and in photoshop if you use RAW.
With jpg editing done by a third party... yeah, those are easy to spot with the right tools
Bright eyed 24yo non-dev: Hey look at this amazing thing I made. Buy a print and think about conservation and I will donate money to a charity. World: Wow. Hang on, not wow! NOT. WOW! Our original wow was based on our own distorted / ignorant reality, now corrected by internet / Truth™. OMG you f#$!ing tried to trick us. At least we're pretty sure you did. Destroy.
Edit: She's 24. She doesn't need to be taught a lesson by you or the internet.
If you don't want to blame her, blame the journalists who reprinted her artwork, as if it were a real photograph.
Is there website still designed to be deliberately misleading?
It's her website. It's her art. She can do what she wants. Maybe some people should take responsibility for being "fooled" by fiction themselves instead of trying to blame some random artist for deception.
People keep running into things like that all the time, for me previous case was being assigned a completely fake quote in some local news website (luckily, they had neither my name nor photo).
If someone is unsure why some people claim that global warming is fake, smog is not harmful and so on - that is because we have far too many lies and people willing to defend clear liars.
As result many people flail looking for trustworthy data source. And typically end with even worse, but for many distinction was not clear.
Very, very little photography that you will ever see is untouched - from mild tweaking of curves to complete recomposition. This is what photoshop is for.
Ansel Adams, for example, used to dodge and burn extensively when printing, and is viewed as a master of the art - he was mostly really good at upping the drama by amplifying or outright inventing chiaroscuro.
Where does the line lie? Well, it depends on who your friends are.
Putting aside the discussion about these particular photographs... There are clear lines, especially for certain types of photography. For things like reportage, documentary and true nature photography, the simplest rule is to represent reality, without addition, removal or significant alteration. In these circles even significantly cropping a photo can be seen as manipulative. Dodging and burning is mostly seen as processing, not material change to the photograph.
But importantly the rule is to not lie about the reality the photo depicts. Nature photography is as much about the effort or the hunt as it is the photo, so honest is key. Other photos have been removed from competitions and stripped of prizes due to misrepresentation, from editing to using tame animals. You can edit the photo's appearance through post processing of exposure, sharpness, etc... it is the subject that is important. Lying about the subject invalidates the photo.
Until the disclaimer was added there was no way to tell these photos were fake. On the contrary, there was a whole story-telling about how she made this difficult trip and suddenly saw what she was looking for in a magical moment, which supports the idea that this was genuine animal photography.
It is therefore no surprise that people assumed these photos were real and now feel deceived.
Even now that she added this disclaimer, she is antyhing but clear as to what is actually real or not. Are we speaking of editing and composite as in "I took a great photo and just added a few rocks here and removed a cloud there to make it cooler" or in "I built this whole landscape and then added a snow leopard on top of it"?
She claims she genuinely photographied the snow leopard, but this is very unlikely and the deception already identified makes it difficult to believe her.
Edit: reading more carefully she claims she saw "what she was looking for" which you would obviously interpret as a snow leopard, but is vague enough to offer her yet again another opportunity to say she "never said that".
You can suspend your disbelief in the most inane shit for a movie, but this form of art you just can't do it?
The whole point is deceiving people into believing those are real pictures when they are not. She received huge exposure in major newspapers, specialist magazines, social media, even the American embassy because of this (and sold many prints). She enjoyed that attention, even reblogged the article from the Times of London, without ever correcting anybody about the actual nature of her work.
Had she been forthright about the fact that the pictures were fake, she never would have received such attention. The picture still look cool in their own right, but we would be far from the incredible achievement that such picture would represent if they were real.
As Munier said: "I’ve got nothing against this type of creation, but it has to be presented as such".
People need to relax. She's 24 and getting death threats over what?
I mean worst case is she lied about photoshopping a picture? Yeah, so did Victoria Secret and EVERY SINGLE OTHER MEDIA PUBLICATION IN THE WORLD.
National Geographic did it for christ's sake...
Everyone here jumping down her fucking throat, out for blood. "Actually you lied, myehhh, this is bad and you're a bad person"
Like fuck off, I think she's well within her right to represent her art this way. Just because other publications continue to rip off artists for easy content and do very little research on their own doesn't mean she's doing anything wrong.
I think a disclaimer would remove a lot from the art. ARG's don't provide disclaimers, it adds to it. Especially in the early days of the internet "Is it, or is it not?" Is a fun game to play.
Also, nobody was hurt. This isn't disinformation in the sense you're telling people that jews run the world or that vaccines cause autism. Nobody is getting hurt. They're fun pictures. She told a cute ambiguous story. She has like 1000 followers. Everyone can just relax already.
I'd be much more concerned with publications that find random imagery and use it uncritically, how worse would it get when generative visuals go really mainstream?
Is it a photograph of a snow leopard with some alterations in post processing or is it a photograph of a mountain range with a snow leopard inserted after. That is the line.
All photos are edited, the act of saving a pattern of light onto a film or digital sensor itself is a form of editing. The choice of camera, lens and parameters is a form of editing by itself.
But two different parts of a mountain range that can't appear in the same shot with that perspective is not convincing? Really?
Just Google "Serbia Black Panther sightings".
'She never claimed to be a journalist, who expects it to be real or not fake, it's art!'
A few days later.....
'Elon is allowing people to say what they want, this spreads misinformation or perhaps fake news by people!'
But they aren't journalists? Is it okay? Is it art(lol)?
Heh..People making excuses for the things they personally like, or don't like.
Anyway, she is well within her right to make whatever she wants to spread it around dishonestly, but that has consequences depending on how she did it. Looks like she started the wrong way and she got called on it, so she is now reaping the consequences of it.
> Billionaire "Techno-King Genius" owning a platform and tweeting transphobic and racist conspiracies to hundreds of millions of people
"These are the same thing" ~ You
You can both be ok with narrative art and be against widespread misinformation campaigns that lead to tangible deaths and hate crimes. These are not conflicting viewpoints.
Hello extremes!
I'd understand probing someone who had cheated to win a competition—a straight-up wrong act in my view—but I had no idea this particular hobby was filled with people who were quite so sensitive to the authenticity of photographs.
The only deception here is self deception from "journalists" who stole a published her image without bother to do any actual legwork.
These photos from a random source which got spread widely look like they might be doctored, so we asked the photographer and they admitted/denied they were fabricated, this is why we agree/disagree and why genuine photography matters
Instead we get this ratcheting-up of drama, and I can't help but think encouraging a pile-on of death threats is really a healthy approach.
If she had just posted these pics on her instagram with no comments I would be much more willing to say she never claimed anything and people just jumped on it. I probably wouldn't need to, however, because this whole thing wouldn't have happened in that case.
What she did is posting these pics on her website together with a whole story and presentation, with plenty of details and explanations, which makes her appear as a nature photographer on a difficult trip to spot a rare animal and who magically manages to find what she's looking for with a perfect setting, allowing her to snap incredible photography. Obviously such impressive photos will then circulate everywhere (and many people will ask to buy it).
Note that, despite the extensive description of her work for these pictures (i) there is not a single mention they are fake (prior to the disclaimer which was added later), (ii) the website is dedicated to those pictures and does not refer to her previous work on digital image (iii) before the deception was exposed she seemed very happy to be featured on newspaper since she included the article of the London Times.
My view is that this is genuine deceit, not just a person who published pictures without giving it much thoughts and simply found out afterwards that people misinterpreted it.
I think a good example of this sort of analysis was that piece from earlier in the year about the "fake pro cyclist" Nick Clark https://cyclingtips.com/2022/04/exposed-by-a-strava-kom-the-...
Besides a somewhat harsh tone, they are presenting really solid facts, and kind of forensic work, to prove that nothing is like it seems in those images. And if you care a lot about life in/around mountains you are pendantic about local animals and where they appear (or can't appear).
This might be especially true if people have searched/visited that area a lot over the years, and never seen a snow leopard and then somebody comes along and just has that one in a million experience that nobody every had in that place.
Also the digital artist has tried to deceive the viewers into thinking that this is not a composited image: "Squinting through my camera’s telephoto lens, I noticed something in the shadow of Mount Pumori. At first, I thought it was a rock, but it was exactly what I was looking for."
So, was there a snow leopard _at all_ in the end or is that just another (stock) image? What is to be believed by that digital artist? I think this can anger people if they care a lot.
Well, I bet that people who invest enormous effort into actually capturing photos tend to be irritated by people who made collage and present it as areal.