Tell Me Lies

From Craig Silverman's Regret the Error blog:

A photographer whose work appeared in the New York Times Magazine has been accused of digitally manipulating his images. Edgar Martins produced a photo essay entitled "Ruins of the Second Gilded Age." It showed abandoned buildings/construction projects and was featured in the magazine and on the Times website. After commenters on MetaFilter raised questions about the authenticity of the images, the magazine pulled the slideshow from the website ...

The slideshow page in question gives this explanation:

Editors' Note: July 8, 2009

A picture essay in The Times Magazine on Sunday and an expanded slide show on NYTimes.com entitled "Ruins of the Second Gilded Age" showed large housing construction projects across the United States that came to a halt, often half-finished, when the housing market collapsed. The introduction said that the photographer, a freelancer based in Bedford, England, "creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation."

A reader, however, discovered on close examination that one of the pictures was digitally altered, apparently for aesthetic reasons. Editors later confronted the photographer and determined that most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show. Had the editors known that the photographs had been digitally manipulated, they would not have published the picture essay, which has been removed from NYTimes.com.

The truth is that the images from the photo essay are still available on NYTimes.com. One of the links in the original Metafilter post reporting the manupulations gives the URL format: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/06/30/magazine/05gilded.1.jpg. Simply change the final number to view each of the images. I don't know how many images were included in the original essay, but I used this method to view images numbered 1 through 11. Image 2 is the one that first raised suspicions of digital manipulation.

The images were all still available as of just before 11 p.m. Eastern time on 7/17/09, 9 days after the Editors' Note shown/linked above that claimed the images had been removed. Clearly only the navigation was removed, not the images themselves.

Eight Days a Week

Man, has this been a busy week. Sister and I went to see Harry Potter at a 12:15 a.m. show Wednesday morning (review to follow), then I had dinner with the parents Wednesday night and dinner with the parents and Mom's doll group friends last night. No wonder I'm tired. :)

Wednesday night's dinner was at Sear inside the Marriott Marquis. Very pricey, but very good, plus I got to chat with the senior sous chef about Dragon*Con when he came out to deliver our appetizers. Last night's dinner was at Pitty Pat's Porch. Good food, great service, overpriced but not terribly for what's basically a tourist-trap restaurant.

Mom and Dad were in town for the United Federation of Doll Clubs annual convention. (Well, Mom was here for the convention; Dad was just along as chauffeur and general assistant.) Yesterday afternoon, the doll sale room was open to the public, and I got down to the hotel in time to go down there with Mom. I spent 45 minutes in the room and walked out with a doll. Most of the dolls and accessories for sale were VERY VERY expensive, and most weren't my style anyway, but a few vendors had the Asian fabric dolls that I do like. I have one from Japan, one from China, and one from Thailand, and I found a gorgeous one from 1960s Vietnam to add to my collection. Her hair is a little messed up, but otherwise she's in pristine condition. There was another Thai doll that I also loved, but she was more expensive and I couldn't really justify buying them both.

This weekend I finally get my cell phone upgrade! Hooray for QWERTY keyboards!!

Summer Nights (and days)

Once again I've fallen down on the blogging. No real reason, except that it's a lot easier to update Twitter in less than 140 characters than write an actual blog post. :)

Since my last post, I've had a few things happen:

1. Ran/walked my first 5K on June 13, at the Watermelon Festival in Cordele, Georgia. My sister and I ended up walking most of the course, and we finished last, but we FINISHED, and that's what matters. My unofficial time was 52:20. Something to work on bringing down.

2. I've had a terrible cold most of the month that I'm still recovering from. Part of the reason I couldn't run more during the 5K was that I was in the midst of the cold. It's still lingering weeks later, with some sneezing, stuffiness, and a scratchy throat. Summer colds are the pits. I've been off running for a couple of weeks but plan to get back on the training schedule next week.

3. My parents moved into their new (rental) house in early June. I wasn't able to be there because the move date had to be switched, but I was there for the aftermath and some unpacking. I've been back one more weekend since then and will be back again this weekend. Progress is being made! :)

4. My great-uncle Hardy died last week, and the funeral was this past weekend. He had Alzheimer's and had been in a nursing home for years, so it really felt like he left us long ago, but it was still difficult. Always good to see the family, but it's too often been for sad occasions recently, our third family funeral since last fall. At least this weekend it'll be for a celebration, since we have a family cookout for the Fourth of July every year. The watermelon goes in the pool to chill!

5. On a happier note, I had a great dinner with several old college friends a few weeks ago, and we're planning to get together again soon. Two of them I hadn't seen in nearly 20 years, but we picked right back up where we left off. I'm back in touch with several other college friends, too. I have Facebook to thank for finding them all again!