Busted

I am angry. Allen Detrich was a photographer for the Toledo Blade in Ohio. He cheated. This guy had 25 years at the Blade, and did something really stupid. He covered the first baseball game of the Bluffton College team after their fatal bus crash in Atlanta, along with a ton of other photographers from around Ohio. You can read the story on the National Press Photographers Association website, and see the pictures

http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2007/04/toledo01.html

He and everyone else shot a photo of the team huddled in prayer before the game. His photo ran on the front page of the paper.Seems all the other papers represented used their version of the picture as well. All the other pictures had two legs showing beneath signs in the background. Detrich's didn't.

Another photographer was looking at the various papers website looking at their coverage when he noticed the lack of legs. When the Blade's management first asked about why his photo was different, Detrich said he just could not understand why there were no legs in his photo. He didn't manipulate the image. He finally admitted
removing the legs in photoshop, but said he had done it for his own use, and did not mean to turn it in to run in the paper.

He was suspended from work for two days, then resigned over the weekend.

Like I said. This makes me angry. It casts a shadow on the work that we all do. Puts doubt in the minds of our readers. It is also hard for me to believe that this is the first time a guy who has worked in our profession for 25 years has done this. You don't go along for so many years, and all of a sudden cheat. Especially on something like this where you know you gonna get busted. has to be just a routine thing you do.

Now all of his photos in the papers archive are being examined to see if other altered images are seen. Someone should have known before. I would hope that our readers would get on our case if they think we did wrong. The initial call that started these last three posts, the one about Grant's baseball picture, kinda made me angry that someone would doubt what we do. Now I feel differently.

Hold our feet to the fire. If you have a doubt about our work, ask us. Our Director of Photography Woody Marshall would want to know. So would those of us who are trying to be ethical in what we do.

Thanks for letting me rant