Richard Lam’s photo of Vancouver’s Riot Kissing Couple is now world-famous, but in the hours following the Stanley Cup riot plenty of people doubted the image’s authenticity. It seemed to good to be true:
A couple kisses on the street in downtown Vancouver in the middle of the June 15, 2011, Stanley Cup riot. (Richard Lam photo)
One of the things I love about the annual ONA conference is that you always learn about tools you didn’t know existed. This year I learned three tips that can help verify a photo like Lam’s.
In a session called B.S. Detection for Digital Journalists, Craig Silverman and Mandy Jenkins told us about the Image Error Level Analyser, which can tell you whether a photo you upload has been manipulated. Jeffrey’s Exif Viewer lets you enter an image URL and then spits out the metadata accompanying the photo, such as the model of camera that shot it and the date it was taken (provided the camera was calibrated correctly).
Either of these could go a long way toward confirming the authenticity of photo like Lam’s. Failing that, Silverman and Jenkins had another good suggestion: Ask the photographer to show you some images shot immediately before or after the one that seems too good to be true. Nobody shoots just one frame when something big is going down.
If you’re interested in more, they have posted their slideshow on B.S. Detection for Digital Journalists.
