UPDATE: Photographer Yu Wei has apologised**
Nikon has landed itself in hot water with the internet, after awarding a Facebook photography prize to a badly photoshopped image. Take a quick look at the image below.
See it yet?
If you haven’t noticed already, look at the space around the plane. See it yet? There’s a white box around it. We’ve changed the levels here to show how obvious the forgery is.
That’s no cloud
On his Instagram profile, the photographer says he ‘got lucky’ for the shot. If by ‘lucky’ he means ‘Googled ‘plane image’ and used copy pasted the first result,’ then yes.
As of right now, the prize is still intact and Nikon hasn’t responded to the online storm surrounding the contest, although some photoshoppers have gotten creative with the image, as you can see below. Thank you Internet, keep up the good work.
Update: Nikon has responded with the following comment on its Facebook page
‘At Nikon, we believe that innovation and imagination are at the heart of every image. While innovation is driven by the technological advances in our devices and cameras, we see imagination as the ability to see greatness and use each and every tool at your disposal to make them real.
NikonCaptures is a casual photography contest that focuses not on the devices or props you use, but on the imagination and creativity that each photographer exudes while capturing and sharing their images. We have taken in every feedback received, and we sincerely apologise for the oversight on our part. We are now in the process of carefully revisiting the contest’s rules and regulations, for the benefit of all our current NikonCaptures members. We will update everyone of the contest rules once we have revisited all of them.’