altered

Photographer Rory White's Rorshak Tape Transfer Series might look like some kind of surreal digital art, but the images were actually created without Photoshop. White shot portraits of his subjects, printed them out, and invited the subjects to paint, tear, and alter the prints. He then covered the image with packing tape, dropped it in hot water, and peeled off the paper on the back (like a Polaroid emulsion transfer). The semi-transparent image would then be hung from a stand, and the subject rephotographed while standing behind it.

Pete Souza's iconic photo of Obama and his national security team in the Situation Room has become extremely well known in the span of a week, so it's unlikely that any reputable media outlet would dare alter the photo in any way -- but that's exactly what one newspaper did. Orthodox Hasidic newspaper Der Tzitung has a policy of never publishing photographs of women, and decided to publish Obama's situation room photograph with Hillary Clinton and counterterrorism director Audrey Tomason Photoshopped out of the frame.

There's a lot of paranoia when it comes to doing photography in and around airports these days -- much to the dismay of plane spotters -- but wedding photographer and airplane enthusiast Lynn-Kai Chao came up with a neat way to do airplane photography without worrying the TSA: by using airplane models. Believe it or not, the above photograph is actually a Photoshopped photograph of Chao holding a model airplane.

Freelance photographer Marc Feldman lost his job when Getty Images discovered that he had sent in an altered golf photo for distribution. But Feldman says that it was all an innocent mistake.

Feldman says he was in the press tent after the event, reviewing some photos. The golfer in the image, Matt Bettencourt, and his caddie came by to look at photos as well. The caddie had suggested that the photo would look better without him in it, and Feldman demonstrated how easily he could be removed.

The photographer said he thought he saved the altered image on his desktop, but somehow accidentally transmitted the image along with his final images to Getty."I certainly did not mean to send both of them to Getty," he told Guy Reynolds, the Dallas News photo editor who originally blew the whistle on him.

The most recent fuel for resentment towards BP comes from a doctored photo of the company's crisis center in Houston. America blog's John Aravosis made the connection when he examined a hi-resolution version of the photo, which was displayed prominently on the BP website. All this comes after BP promised for increased transparency between the company and the public.

The Economist is in hot water after running an extremely edited photograph of President Obama on a Louisiana beach. The cover photo shows Obama alone on the beach. But the original photo, taken by Reuters photographer Larry Downing, shows that Obama was, in fact, not alone at all.

The altered image crops out Admiral Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, but also goes an extra step to completely omit the presence of Charlotte Randolph, a Louisiana parish president (perhaps with Photoshop CS5's content-aware fill).

This is a huge problem because The Economist's omissions entirely change the tone of the image in order to make Obama appear alone, hanging his head, when in fact he is likely looking down at the beach while in conversation with the two people next to him.  Additionally, according to journalism ethics, news photos should not be altered, especially to this extent.

News agency Reuters is being accused of biased reporting after it was discovered that photographs released by the agency had …