Group questions fake nature photography

[Catherine]

There is a group formed that is questioning some of the popular nature shots. Some of them clearly are fake. It is easy to rig up pictures to make it look like animals have done something amazing. There are pictures that really are questionable.

http://news.google.ca/news/url?sr=1&ct2=...t=2&at=dt0


I am glad someone is doing this. There are lots of times reptile pictures are faked. I can tell to look at it that the animal wouldn't be sitting like that or the two animals wouldn't be together in the wild.

It gives good pictures a bad name when so many things on the internet are faked.

[Tobi]

I guess that always was a temptation in this increasingly 'photoshopped' world we live in online.

Photoshop (and similar editing programs) are fascinating and can be used so creatively. But to pass off edited shots as natural photographs is just plain cheating and a great pity.
We have all seen it with the impossibly perfect beautiful models....unfortunately such artwork has given 'real women' complexes about their natural bodies!
I imagine 'photoshopped' pictures get everywhere, and we can be duped more often than not.

It is a shame such pictures are being passed off as authentic nature shots.

Now -this is off at a tangent a little bit and probably should be a new thread....but what is even more worrying than this, are the "cute funny dogs and cats" videos. As they stand they are great fun. But sometimes there are very dark secrets behind what these animals do. Not all, by any means. Many are genuine candid videos. But some are not....and conceal a regime of cruelty and pain for the animal.

[Catherine]

Quote:Now -this is off at a tangent a little bit and probably should be a new thread....but what is even more worrying than this, are the "cute funny dogs and cats" videos. As they stand they are great fun. But sometimes there are very dark secrets behind what these animals do. Not all, by any means. Many are genuine candid videos. But some are not....and conceal a regime of cruelty and pain for the animal.

It is not totally off topic. It is another example of exploiting animals to gain internet attention. It rates up there with some of the dangerous selfies that have resulted in animal deaths.

I wonder if anyone has done research on the subject. I am sure the early videos were spontaneous. The newer stuff is questionable. People probably work for hours to get the right video.  

The darker side would be acts of animal cruelty done to produce a "viral" video. Do you have any idea how often it happens. I am sure it does happen. People are willing to do anything for attention.

[Tobi]

Concerning the 'viral videos' craze...I actually stumbled across one of the most horrendous videos on YouTube I have ever seen. I think that was a year or more ago. A young man was 'training' his little dog to do some trick (I can't even remember quite what now...I think it was to walk on two legs.) It contained the most outright bullying and cruelty, and was extremely painful to watch even 2 minutes of. The man seemed crazed, and my guess was he was mentally ill. I won't describe any more. I certainly wasn't going to post it here.
I investigated this into the middle of the night, and discovered that animal cruelty people (animal control or whoever) had taken the dog away from him, and it had been re-homed safely elsewhere, and he was charged, etc There were a number of reports about this in the media.
Yet oddly -the video was STILL playing on You Tube! I contacted Google and told them this needed to be taken down.
How fast they are to pull off a movie which presumably would be available on subscription services (and presumably Google has a vested interest in financially??) ....but how they ignored that one!
Enough said.
Anyway I have not encountered the video since. So I think they did listen.

It did make me concerned that others may do similar to make videos of their pets performing unusual tricks. ....but I don't know obviously.

[Catherine]

I am sure there are others like that. I am glad he was stopped and the dog removed. It is even better that he was charged.

The only way to stop it is for all of us who care to look at videos and report them. I think You Tube will remove videos and Facebook will as well. I think they will even remove a Facebook page. Of course real cruelty has to be reported to local authorities so they can intervene. 

In some ways the internet allows abusers of all kinds a way to show off their cruelty. It also gives us a chance to catch them.
So when we are spending time watching Funny Cat videos we are also policing the internet for animal cruelty.  It is a tool we never had before and all of us can use it.

Did you do a thread about the subject of animal cruelty videos? I am vaguely remembering something, but I may be mixing it with something else.

[Tobi]

When I discovered that video, it was all old news apparently, and the cruelty case had been dealt with and reported in various media sources. But the video was still running! Anyway, as far as I know it isn't now. Others were also horrified (via comments posted there), and we communicated what we had found in the media via the comments section. It may have been -though I can't quite remember now -that someone had reported that man to authorities as a result of seeing the video (?) But it may have been as a result of seeing it elsewhere.
But I was shocked that the video was just allowed to continue!
Google have pulled movies off within hours....and bizarrely -very often after I have watched them the night before and posted about them on, say, a forum. HOURS.
Someone else I know a little as a contributor via another forum, posted a movie link which he had uploaded, to a film many there were eager to see (a spiritual themed film) -aware it wouldn't last long. And it didn't. It disappeared within about one week I think.
Yet that horrific and heartbreaking cruelty to a little dog must have been running for at least weeks, and probably months. And I am SURE it must have been reported by at least half a dozen of those who left shocked comments.

The one great thing was that the little dog was taken out of that nightmare and re-homed. Knowing that, I could breathe again. The dog will be okay.

These people who commit such acts will, at least some percentage of the time, like to parade their 'creativity' in some way online. They like to show what they have done, and they like an audience. Yes it does fall to us to keep a watchful eye open and move into action whenever we see anything which is overtly cruel or which is worrying. We can rarely stop that kind of thing at source, but we can shorten the time an animal has to suffer, by being watchful, and ready to act.

No Catherine...I don't remember posting a thread about videos....I don't think so anyway, but sometimes I can forget.

[Catherine]

We will have to think about how to post a thread on the subject. We want people to know what to do if they see a video like that.
I just have a vague memory about the issue, but I may be mixing it with something else too. We read and view a lot of stuff on different sites. I think we do well that we remember as much as we do.

I think they pull some videos down quickly because they are scared of copyright laws. They don't want to risk legal trouble.
Taking down and animal cruelty video is important for a whole different set of reason. None of the reasons have financial implications for Google, YouTube or Facebook. They have let serious cruelty videos towards people stay up  for surprizing amounts of time.

We just have to keep pushing so that they know people want swift action when cruelty is involved.

[Tobi]

I would be happy to start a new thread about what to do if anything is viewed online which we suspect involves animal cruelty.
I can't (and wouldn't anyway even if I could) -post a link to that video I mentioned, but at least can suggest some guidelines, and anyone else can add other ideas if they wish.

[Catherine]

You could post it as a general discussion. It would open up the whole topic of how to respond to animal abuse. We know it is out there and with the internet some of us will encounter images of abuse. Not everyone knows how to respond to it.