This story is particularly juicy because in the Metafilter thread in question (you can read it at <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/83061/Ruins-of-the-Second-Gilded-Age" rel="nofollow">http://www.metafilter.com/83061/Ruins-of-the-Second-Gilded-A...</a>) the commenters pointed out a lot more work by this same photographer (Edgar Martins) which is apparently doctored in the same fashion. The funny thing is that Martins makes a public point of claiming that he doesn't do any "digital manipulation" on his pictures, which appears to be a total joke.<p>Here are some more of his images which he claimed to have shot naturally that appear photoshopped to be symmetrical:<p><a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/06/30/magazine/05gilded.3.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/06/30/magazine/05gi...</a><p><a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/06/30/magazine/05gilded.8.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/06/30/magazine/05gi...</a> (orange fence in front)<p><a href="http://www.jmakes.com/spfo/dimpresent1.gif" rel="nofollow">http://www.jmakes.com/spfo/dimpresent1.gif</a><p><a href="http://www.artnet.com/Artists/LotDetailPage.aspx?lot_id=0E9A0A625C8CDC2EC7B27EB47F90FFD1" rel="nofollow">http://www.artnet.com/Artists/LotDetailPage.aspx?lot_id=0E9A...</a> (plants are mirrored)<p><a href="http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/images/thumbnail1.php/d4d7a4363323013004970.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/images/thumbnail1.php/d4d7a...</a>
Perhaps in the photographer's house you can climb a flight of stairs five steps only to find another flight of stairs that lead you back down. He likes to exercise, but only just.
I find it quite amazing that the photographer even bothered to 'shop the photo. It seems to me as irrationality on his or his editors' part.<p>In this case, I don't think the doctoring of the photo affects the substance of the article. However, that said, this is certainly an ethical lapse that should be soundly rejected by the New York Times' readership.
Reminds me of the time the NYTimes swiped a collage illustration I made on my blog and ran it without attribution:<p><a href="http://gojomo.blogspot.com/2005/04/nytimes-republishes-my-artwork-without.html" rel="nofollow">http://gojomo.blogspot.com/2005/04/nytimes-republishes-my-ar...</a><p>It took two emails of gradually-increasing emotional load -- I added the 'plagiarism' label to the second -- to get them to run a correction.<p>It wasn't a giant deal -- a recreation of another blogger's (Niall Kennedy's) concept -- but to see that just like any blogger, the NYTimes may just carelessly clip things from the web was eye-opening.