"Apparently BP is no more adept at doctoring photos than it is at plugging deep-sea oil leaks"

An inquiring mind (AKA: SLABBED reader) send an email asking, “Why is this not the biggest news in the Country right now?”  Well, one answer could be that Lindsay Lohan’s trip to the pokey has dominated the news and BP isn’t blond.  Another could be that the MSM was relucant to report, “A blogger has noticed that the oil giant altered a photograph of its Houston crisis room, cutting and pasting three underwater images into a wall of video feeds from remotely operated undersea vehicles”.

However, now that the Washington Post has the story, it’s legs are growing:

The altered photo is displayed prominently on the company’s Web site.

An enlarged version of the photograph reveals flaws in the editing job. One of the 10 images sticks down into the head of one of the people sitting in front of the wall, while another piece of the image is separated from the other side of the head by jagged white space. The right side of the same image also hangs down below the area on which the video feeds were projected.

John Aravosis pointed out the alterations Monday evening on his Americablog.com and observed, “I guess if you’re doing fake crisis response, you might as well fake a photo of the crisis response center.” The photo doctoring comes as BP has promised transparency in a bid to regain the public’s trust.

My well-intentioned brother-in-law once used photoshop to trim down a rather plump young family friend whose size was even more pronounced in a group shot of my daughter and similarly slim college friends.  Amazingly, she looked at the finished product and exclaimed, “OMG, I look anorexic!”  IOW, not everyone appreciates the courtesy of a photoshop-altered reality as Wa-Po points out:

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.

“Normally we only use Photoshop for the typical purposes of color correction and cropping,” Dean said in an e-mail. “In this case they copied and pasted three ROV screen images in the original photo over three screens that were not running video feeds at the time.”

Dean said BP usually has a couple remotely operated vehicles on the surface at any given time for maintenance.

“We will replace the Photoshopped version currently on bp.com with the original image tonight,” he added. “We’ve instructed our post-production team to refrain from doing this in the future.”

So, that’s the story – for now!

13 thoughts on “"Apparently BP is no more adept at doctoring photos than it is at plugging deep-sea oil leaks"”

  4. The funny thing about all of this is, why? It made no sense…whether you have a real or imagined crisis team looking at 6 or 9 or 5 images on television screens…what’s the difference? For a company that seems to be so adept at screwing people on a daily basis, they sure make a lot of stupid mistakes. They freakin’ kill me.

  5. Why is BP GIVEN FREE REIGN in the Gulf!?
    THEY should be SHOT AS POAC HERS!
    Hasn’t their inability been PROVEN!
    They are housing workers in containment units…One caught on fire last night!!!!
    Why are these IDIOTS STILL in the GULF!!!!

  9. sorry if I confused this response with an idiot on facebook?

    GAWD…I gotta get me a monkey to help me keep things straight…

    Curious George?

  10. OOOOOOOOOOOOwweeeeeeeeeeeeeee I’m afraid I can’t help you remember Patricia cause I and my elderly uncle have a hard time finding where we last left our nanas! We have to send parrot on fly-overs to scout them up or buy some new ones at the Winn-Dixie cross da’ street. Trying to get a monkey crossing sign on Airline but the Council only wants to put more millions in the Non-Performing Arts Bldg. on side of our rainforest.

    OOOOOOOOOwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

  13. At this rate just let me be the first here to proclaim death to the capitalist and non socialist

    Guys it is not the system that is broke…its some of the people… I dont want you nor anyone else to take care of me……and yes I am and will take care of the person across the street from me….WE ARE OUR BROTHERS KEEPERS. Not Washington

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