The Sun is at the center of a royal controversy, after printing this cover photo of HRH Prince Harry groping comely young friend Natalie Pinkham. At the center of the furor are claims that the disgraceful photograph is in fact three years old, and thus does not depict Harry cheating on his current girlfriend, as the Sun insinuated.
But I have discovered that the scandal goes even deeper. The photo is not merely inaccurate for being out of date, it is also heavily retouched. To demonstrate, let us take a closer look.
Notice the brilliance of the light, and the appearance it gives to the subjects, typical of indoor flash snapshots. Since the light source is in approximately the same location as the lens, it washes out shadows and textures, and flattens details. But there are two rather salient exceptions — two details which are not flattened, but rather the opposite. Let’s take a closer look.
How did Miss Pinkham’s chest manage to defy the direct light of the flashbulb, and generate these dark crescent shadows? Let’s take a closer look.
As magnification reveals, the shadows were simply — and crudely — drawn. (WARNING: The above images depict a woman’s cleavage, and might have been unsafe for work.)
Anticipating your objections, which are wrong and without merit, I herewith provide two more recent photographs of Miss Pinkham. Yes, she has changed her hair color to brunette.
But if I could ask you once more to direct your attention to her general chest area, please notice that it is not formed in such a way as to make the Sun photo even remotely plausible.
The ethics of photojournalism have once again been trampled. Retouching a news photo, even for the purpose of enhancing a groping victim’s cleavage, must never be countenanced. The Sun owes the world an apology.
UPDATE: The Sun has printed an apology in the Aug. 17 issue. In three sentences on page 6, the editors confessed to “the error” of wrongly dating and locating the photograph. But they still have not admitted to their fakery of the image itself! Enough stonewalling. The Sun owes the world another apology.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Think I’m mistaken? Prove I’m wrong, and win a pint of Guinness.
THIRD UPDATE: Does shocking footage exonerate Sun?
FOURTH UPDATE: The table did it?
Good shot, Pardner!
You nail ‘em, and I’ll flail ‘em!
Saw yr post at LGF… check out mine at
BrainSurgeryWithSpoons.blogspot.com
Ordinarily I’m with you on these things, but my question for you is whether you’re suggesting that her entire body has been replaced with another or just shadows added to her boobs.
The light on her face is, in fact, way more washed out than that on the boobs, which to me suggests a more focused light, like that on a tabloid reporter’s camcorder — you know, the kind one would take to a poorly lit party. If you look at the breast shadows alone, they coincide very well with all the other shadowing on her body. Take a look at the wrinkles above the breasts, the edges of her shoulders, the shadows cast by her hair, on Harry’s arm etc. They’re all consistent with a more diffused light from aproximately camcorder height, which is of course what the edges of a spot on a camcorder would provide. Also the light glare on necklace and on his cut thumb (why wouldnt they have fixed his cut thumb?? that seems pretty easy to prove it isn’t current right there) are pretty consistent.
As far as your insinuation that her lovely little boobs arent substantial enough to have created such magnificent shadows… take a another look at the position her boobs are in. They’re being forcibly lifted upwards by one or both of his hands, “pancaking,” if you will. All the other photos you have of her have them totally and utterly unsupported, hanging downwards.
As one who has done more than his fair share of retouching photos in exactly the same way you’re suggesting the Sun has, I have to disagree with you.
Howdy, Jer. (Welcome to my blogroll, by the way.)
The issue was never substance (nothing wrong with the substance), so much as form. The breasts under discussion simply are not shaped like the fleshy satellite dishes which would have generated those tonal shadows.
The “forcibly lifted upwards” hypothesis does not apply to the ungroped appendage, viz. Miss Pinkham’s left breast. The only force being applied to that one was with an airbrush. HRH’s left hand is cropped out, but his arm seems to be bearing weight; from the angle I conclude that his unseen hand is supporting his weight on a table, an armrest, or his own left knee. It is not thrusting upwards.
Since I know you have a trained eye, I will ask you to indulge me by looking at this:
Here I have retouched the Sun photo (although I might say “detouched” since I’m trying to restore the image to its state before their retouching), removing the shading I think they added. Doesn’t your eye tell you it’s more like reality?
Either way, I welcome and respect your views, of course.
Well, even if his left hand isn’t pushing up on her left breast, her tight-fitting top is.
I’m on my Sidekick right now, which is less than optimal viewing conditions for photographs, so I’ll have to comment on your detouching later this evening.
As a self-proclaimed expert on:
A) the behavior of light and shadow on three-dimensional surfaces,
B) manipulating photographs,
and
C) breasts,
I feel the need to spend a little time generating a visual aid to help demonstrate that I think nothing fishy is going on in that photo.
I’ll drop you a line in-re: the evidence before publishing, so you’ll have time to write up your retraction
Thanks for blogrolling me, and I hope you enjoy. I’ve been reading you since I was an unwitting participant in Ask The Blog-o-sphere: Worst Case Scenario, and must confess that I enjoy your stuff very much.
OK. I spent most of yesterday plotting the most amazing debunkery of all time, but alas it is not to be. There shall be no retraction.
See, my plan was to make a duplicate of the photo in question using myself as model for both parts. I’d don one of my girlfriend’s black strappy tops, push up my man-boobs, and snap a photo exhibiting the same shadowing. It was to be hilarious and unquestionably prove my case.
Unfortunately, my man-boobs have neither the substance nor structure to pull this off. In fact, despite my sensitivity of them, they’re hardly boobs at all.
I do maintain that shadowing like that is within the realm of possibility, the hand + tight top would raise both boobs like that, and that depending on the lighting a scene like that is completely plausible.
That said, the more I look at the photo, the more I think they probably might have doctored it. The thing is though, the shadowing doesn’t serve as any kind of proof for me, it’s more like an “I wouldn’t put it past them…. hell, they probably did,” type thing. Also, your detouched version doesn’t look any less probable or realistic to me, so I concede that it’s possible.
Hell, even probable.
I’m glad you’re coming around to the correct assessment, as I was sure you eventually would. I myself spent time Wednesday trying to duplicate the results of the Sun photo, in order to test my hypothesis that it is impossible. I applied varying amounts of pressure from varying directions, and, like you, never succeeded in duplicating the Sun’s results.
Unlike you, however, I found it germane to perform these experiments with a woman.
All I have to say is, ow.
TMI. But the photo doesn’t come off all that obviously tampered with to mine eye, even under magnification. It looks like her unample chest was packed tighly into a cleavage building bra. Those things don’t look unnaturally big, but rather smashed in.
Gentlemen, I had hoped I could prove my case most tastefully, by directing your attention to the lighting and the magnification. I believe these alone prove the Sun’s fakery, but I see to my chagrin that you are unconvinced.
And so now I shall have to resort to anatomical lessons. I shall endeavor to treat these matters with as much sensitivity as possible, but I should warn any readers still here who don’t want to see a graphic discussion of boobies, to go away now. And my apologies to Miss Pinkham, whose honor I am trying to defend.
For at least ten millennia, it has been an axiom for artists that the breast line is one head-height below the chin. The Egyptians knew it, the Greeks knew it, and the Romans knew it. Leonardo knew it, I know it, and now you know it.
If you harbor any doubt that this canon of anatomy really applies to actual people, I refer you to Female Anatomy for Artist: huge source of hi-res female pose photos. (I’ve been dying to work that link in somewhere for months.)
Given this axiom, we can extrapolate where Miss Pinkham’s breasts would naturally have fallen, outside the frame of the Sun photo:
The accuracy of this extrapolation is further borne out by overlaying a true photo of Miss Pinkham on top of the Sun’s picture.
Now that we know where those breasts really were at the time of the groping, your theories of tightly fit tops and push-up brassieres collapse. The breasts imagined by the Sun’s Photoshop artist are higher, further apart, and smaller than the real ones to be found on Natalie Pinkham (or on any normally proportioned woman).
There are foundation garments which give “lift” to the bosom, but they tend to push the breasts together, not shove them into the armpits.
If you still wish to argue the point, I’m afraid I will no longer be accepting mere conjecture. I’ve done a lot of legwork on this, and I’ve earned the right to insist on more. Please test your theories on video, and send me actual proof that you have found a garment that replicates the inhuman proportions of the Sun photo, and I will retract my own allegations.
Legwork, we’re calling it?
I have thrown down the gauntlet. I’m so sure I am right that I am betting a great treasure on it. Anyone at all who can prove that this photo could possibly be genuine will earn the coveted Gleeson Researcher of the Century Award! And a beer.
[…] Siguiendo la denuncia por parte de los bloggers, me he encontrado con la curiosa página de Sean Gleenson, un aficionado a desmontar montajes, vengan de The Sun (como el análisis de la iluminación del pecho que sostiene el príncipe Harry) o de medios cubanos (y su sospecha de toda imagen castrista). Archivado en: […]
I think you got caught looking at boobies and had to make this whole thing up as a cover.