The Faked World Trade Center Tourist Photo
As twisted as the human mind can be, it came as no surprise that someone would eventually try to pass off a fake photo on the internet related to the horrendous World Trade Center attacks.

This photo, titled UHOH.JPG or MISSING(1).JPG, purported to show a hapless tourist posing on the roof of the World Trade Center a split second before the first plane struck. In fact, multiple versions of the photo were circulated, with varying degrees of tampering of the date and plane. The text message which accompanied the photo said "This is just an astonishing picture..this was from a camera found in the wreckage of the WTC, developed by the FBI for evidence and released on the net today....the guy still has no name and is missing..."

Besides the more obvious trimmings of a fake related to the WTC buildings themselves (see the link below for more details), the photo exhibited other clues to its lack of authenticity.

The tourist is dressed for cold weather in a winter coat with a wool pullover hat, on what began as a beautiful New York morning on September 11, 2001. The temperature was approximately 72 degrees (the morning low was 66 degrees); top wind speed that day was less than 15 mph. Look at other photos taken that day of people and you'll see no winter coats.

The photographer also seems blithely unaware of the impending impact with the large airliner he could clearly see in his viewfinder.

The news media (Gamma Press) videotape of the first crash attack shows the plane literally divebombing the building at a downward angle, with its left wing tipped down. In the faked photo the plane is leveled.

While the sun is shining from the guy's left, producing harsh shadows on the left side of his face, the plane is evenly lighted from above.

The original plane image (which was derived from the one at left) was added to the tourist photo after a cut and paste with image software, then layered in to the urban background.

As you can see in the photo below, the stock photo from upper left fits perfectly over the uhoh.jpg plane.

The stock photo plane was sharp, and the background in the tourist shot was out of focus, so the hoaxster had to blur the plane a bit to make it blend. The plane was made a little too blurry in this version, though, at the tail and above the right wing, as shown below in this magnification:

The photo's been blurred so much that the plane's tail (red arrow) isn't even visible, and that horizontal blurry line (blue arrows) is another telltale clue.

Now note the date stamp in the lower right corner of UHOH.JPG. It says 09 11 01. Above is a magnification of the date stamp, which has been clearly altered.  

Another version (left) had a much more clearly defined date, but still showed artifacts (arrows) which suggested alteration.

Look closely and you can see that the year and day have clearly been changed.

The format and style of a legitimate digital date stamp can vary greatly. Below is a date stamp on a low resolution photo, blown up twice its original size:

The datestamp from another camera, at a higher resolution.

Any of these dates can be convincingly altered. Below is what a date stamp looks like on an unrelated high resolution photograph made by yet another camera, magnified:

As an example, the date stamp above was changed by BluEarthArts to read September 11, 2001 (see eblow).

The bottom line is, there are lots of clues in this photo which shout FAKE!, and the digital alterations were really pretty sloppy and should have been obvious, but the photo was forwarded around the planet and convinced many people that it actually documented a "tragic last moment" of someone's life.  

Value what is true. Check the facts before you e-mail photos like this out to your friends. Chances are that someone has already discovered and exposed the fakery.

For more on digital image wizardry, click here.  A great reference source for identifying dubious photos, and any other potential internet hoaxes, is the snopes.com site.

Digital photos are easy to fake, they have the potential for great damage depending on content, and they can be widely and indiscriminately distributed over the Internet.

Be a skeptic.

(September 11, 2006)
When we first posted the "uhoh" page, we had no idea that it was to quickly become the most read page on our site. It continues to be a frequently read page at BluEarthArts, especially in the days leading up to the annual observance of September 11.

As time passed, more became known of the origins of this photo. A Hungarian tourist who had visited New York in November, 1997 was responsible for this hoax - being both the subject and the instigator. He'd sent the alteration to friends as a joke after the events of 9/11.

But not all questions have been answered. Here's what the original photo looked like (below left), plus an additional photo from supposedly the same visit for context (note the time stamp at lower right). Although the original appears genuine under close inspection, it shows vignetting (shadows in the upper corners), and does not bear a time stamp like the one in the lower right corner of the context photo.

The vignetting may be related to the different directions the camera was pointing in the two photos. The absence of a time stamp in the left photo, however, remains an anomalie.