The digital age has breathed new life into photography, at least as far as convenience is concerned, but there will always be photographers who take pictures and people who take snaps. That will never alter no matter how much the equipment progresses for the photographer has an 'eye' for a good shot. The big change, apart from the technology itself, is that the digital era has put photography into the hands of the masses; now almost everyone has a digital camera even if it is no more than a camera phone.
Digital photography with a top of the range, multi megapixel SLR camera is now also very close to the quality of 35mm transparency film. You would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a shot taken with the different media even at poster size and the bulk of the photographs you see in magazines will have been taken with a digital camera. We’re awash with pictures, and they can be sent around the world via email almost as fast as you can say ‘smile please’. With just a little knowledge of how to take a decent picture it’s difficult to take a poor one, and when you check the results in the monitor you simply delete those that are not up to scratch and just take them again. No wasted film, no processing costs. And as if that wasn’t enough we have a glut of inexpensive image editing software around these days that can change a poor shot into a work of art. Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems have it all built in, so the ability to edit images is more convenient and easier than ever.
But that’s the rub, for image editing will be even more open to abuse by those who wish to deceive. And believe me, there are more than a few deceivers around, and some have quite a talent for it. In some cases you would never know the difference between a manufactured picture and the genuine article unless you had access to the original and knew exactly what to look for.
Take a look at the first image of me with a chub. How big? It certainly looks big enough to win a wad of cash and a weekly award.
Now look at the second image, which is the unedited and genuine shot of the fish. I can't actually remember what it weighed but it was less than 5lb.
The edited and false image of the chub took me just a few minutes to do in Photoshop, and it wouldn't pass scrutiny by anyone who cared to take a close look at it. But it gives you a good idea of what could be done by someone who knows how to use the software and spent more time perfecting it.One of the easiest things to do is to take an element from one image and drop it into another image. Where fishing pictures are concerned this usually means cutting a fish from one picture and dropping it into the hands of an angler in another picture. Get the sizing right and the fish of course looks much bigger than it really is. Another trick used by the cheats is the ‘angler’ who cuts an image of himself holding a fish from one shot and pastes it into an image of a lake or riverside scene, thereby making it look like the fish was caught from quite a different location to where it really was caught. Quite recently one ‘angler’ openly suggested in print that to do so was a good way of disguising where you were catching your fish. Obviously oblivious to, or not caring, that to do such a thing would put pressure on someone else’s water. Knowing the ‘angler’ like I do I’m sure it was the latter.
It’s prudent to ask why. Why do some anglers wish to behave in that way? The out and out crooks are obviously doing it for the money and the prizes that some angling publications offer. That, in a perverted kind of way, is possibly more understandable than the anglers who do it for the glory and for no other reason than they’re just by nature deceitful and dishonest. Why can’t it be enough to just take the photograph with an unrecognisable background, or with a brolly or a bivvie in the background? And it’s easy enough to take the picture from a high angle so that all that is visible, apart from the angler and fish, is grass. The only conclusion you can come to is that there are some people who actually enjoy the dishonest and deceitful subterfuge.
Worse are those anglers who are total hypocrites. One in particular I’ve been unfortunate enough to run into on more than one occasion has criticised more people than I care to remember for publishing photos of fish they’ve caught where he’s been able to recognise a blade of grass or two. He’s caused more trouble for his fellow anglers and the club he belonged to than anyone else I know. I’ll never forget the day we had a toe to toe argument on the Dove when he accused me of publishing a picture of the stretch that showed a club sign (which was a lie) and telling me I wasn’t being fair on the others who fished there. Now he’s no longer a member of that particular club he’s publishing pictures on a regular basis that show swims in detail. And then he wonders why he’s known as Billy Nomates and why nobody believes a word he says. Thankfully, the real truth is slowly emerging and he fools fewer people as each day passes.
So what can we do about this dishonest image manipulation? One thing I would suggest is that editors really scrutinise the images they’re sent. It’s not too difficult to spot editing that goes beyond simple image enhancement. A couple of months or so ago I took a copy of one of our weeklies to a FishingMagic fish-in and indicated a few points in a barbel picture sent in by our ‘friend’. Within a few seconds the dozen or so lads (and lassie) could see where the fish had been pasted and blended none too skilfully into another shot.
Of course, someone who is more adept at image editing would be able to produce an image that would pass scrutiny, so what the answer is then I don’t really know. I suppose in many ways it doesn’t matter, for any system that relies solely on photographic evidence has to accept that it is wide open to the sharks who will take advantage. And yet the organisation that should be as foolproof as is practicably possible, the British Record Fish Committee, does accept photographic evidence!
I’m not particularly cynical by nature, but some of the images I see in some of our publications cause me to smile wryly at the very least, and others cause me to roar with derisive laughter. Not always due to dishonest manipulation but for the claims made for the fish in the photograph. Apart from those sad people who do this to make a profit, and the even more sad people who do it for some kind of recognition, or to help sell a product, I do wonder what kind of life they’ve led that has brought them to such a low ebb they need to fabricate fish catches, either through direct lying or photo editing. A few anglers are so paranoid about being second best on the waters they fish they’ll stoop to any level to appear to be on top.
They’re fish for God’s sake, and many of the fish we catch most of the time are largely the result of good luck rather than good judgement. The cheating toe rags should get a life, grow up and stop being so bloody pathetic.
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