BP’s Bizarre Photo Alterations

Having worked as a photographer for several years, I have spent many sleepless nights with Photoshop open, “perfecting” images for fashion editorials and advertisements. A slightly higher shoulder, maybe a different color for the background, perhaps hair that is a bit longer. By nature, photographs lie. They capture only an instant, a sliver of time. It is up to the photographer to create a coherent story through these little lies, creating a larger truth when viewed together. Photoshop and other image editing software enables the photographer (or anyone) to turn a white lie into a dark thunderstorm of a lie, or more innocuously, to simply make parts of an image more visible.

After traveling over one thousand miles from Florida’s Panhandle to Grand Isle, Louisiana and back to document the devastation wrought by the deadly sea of crude oil, I feel confident when I say that BP is not handling the disaster as well as their multi-million dollar TV commercials and newspaper ads would like us to believe. I encountered a cleanup effort that seemed to focus its greatest attention on easily accessible beaches frequented by tourists, leaving more secluded areas awash with death and oil. Boom languished uselessly near the shore as waves swept over and under and around it, allowing the crude to drift freely onto the beaches, bringing with it a ghoulish horde of dead fish and other marine wildlife. A long hike along the beach in Grand Isle took me to a deserted stretch of shore covered with dark brown pools of oil. The carcasses of birds, fish, and dolphins littered the sand and rocks – left under the fiery Louisiana sun to rot and quickly disappear at the hands claws of hungry crabs with more appetite than sense.

On July 19, 2010, John Aravosis reported on a “fake” photo of the Crisis Command Center found on BP’s very own website. The photo wasn’t even one that required hours of careful examination to spot what had been changed in Photoshop; it was blatantly and ridiculously obvious. The Washington Post picked up on the story and reported the following: “Scott Dean, a spokesman for BP, said that there was nothing sinister in the photo alteration and provided the original unaltered version. He said that a photographer working for the company had inserted the three images in spots where the video screens were blank.”

This image spotted by Aravosis inspired this commentary by Jason Linkins in a Huffington Post article:

“So why does a Photoshop image matter? It matters because of the pattern. A seemingly superfluous image on a website, the dispatching of a team of fake reporters, the deliberate — potentially dangerous — obfuscation of oil spill flow… these actions all spring from the same desire, the desire to deceive.”

While I’m hesitant to believe that orders to alter this image came from the top, Linkins raises a point that is sure to spawn debate. Was this Photoshop job simply the work of the photographer as BP claims, or did BP intend for their command center to look more busy with 10 active screens instead of only 7? Neither possibility makes much sense, and it’s possible that we may never know for sure.

I found a second image that had been altered, but the alterations seemed even more innocent than those in the first image. It seemed as if the only alterations made were for the purpose of darkening the over-exposed projector screen to make it more visible. Today a German blogger spotted another image that had been Photoshopped on BP America’s flickr photostream. This image is perhaps the most puzzling of all and yet again, I can’t think of any good reason for altering this photo either.

Despite some people sharing the opinion that the images have been altered to conceal something, it seems unlikely that these images are part of a truly elaborate conspiracy; BP’s flickr account shows dozens of photographs of oiled beaches, marshes, and animals, none of which appear to be doctored. There are some images in which the water looks suspiciously blue, but this too seems to be an aesthetic choice rather than an effort to trick the public. This debacle has left me a bit puzzled, yet one thing remains clear – the Gulf of Mexico will take decades to recover from this man-made disaster. BP’s website shows only living wildlife, much of which is either completely devoid of oil contamination or is in the process of being cleaned.

While they don’t seem to be doctoring any of those images, they certainly aren’t presenting the entire story, which doesn’t have quite the happy ending their photos would lead one to believe. There is still incredible beauty that remains in the Gulf, yet there are dark images of tragedy that should be seen to ensure that we never allow anything like this to happen again. As of July 20th, 2010 these are the numbers of dead animals (not including fish) that have been collected: 2,432 birds, 482 sea turtles, and 62 mammals including dolphins. It’s likely that we will never know the true death count, many creatures will simply be eaten at sea and on the beaches by other animals, others will sink to the bottom, some will wash ashore in difficult to reach areas, and others still will quickly decay in the summer heat before they can be found and counted.

You can see more photos like the ones below that show the less picturesque side of oil contamination and its tragic effects in Part VII and Part VIII:

Cleanup workers on Grand Isle struggle to keep up with the dark oil washing ashore.

A dolphin left to decay on a secluded beach in Grand Isle, Louisiana.

The bones of another dolphin, only yards from the other on a beach in Grand Isle, Louisiana.

An uncleaned and unprotected stretch of beach along Barataria Pass on Grand Isle, Louisiana.

What has consistently bothered me about BP’s cleanup and containment efforts is not simply that they are a multi-billion dollar corporation as some seem upset by, but rather that they seem to prefer to put on a show, instead of coordinating a response effort that would truly minimize the economic and environmental devastation. There are good people who work at BP, I’m sure of it, but a transparent, honest company must have leaders who realize that there is a time to admit shortcomings.