Hoax Museum Blog: Photos

Big Roosters — A visitor named 'AJ' wrote in with this question:
Awhile back there was a picture of a Very Big Rooster with a guy
in a cowboy hat and a rope tied around the neck of the rooster, where Can I
find that picture?
Here's the picture, plus a look at some other big roosters of yesteryear.

Big Plane — Try to guess if this photo of a really big plane getting stuck as it crosses a ramp over a highway is real or fake. The answer's here.

Julia Roberts on Redbook — Redbook draws fire from Julia Roberts for putting a picture of her on its cover in which a recent image of her head is pasted onto an old picture of her body. Ironically, the title of their article about her is "The Real Julia." Redbook also recently got in trouble for doing the same thing to Jennifer Aniston. The problem, of course, is not in their use of composite images (everyone does that), but in doing such a poor job of them.

Touristguy Video Footage — Steve Merchant just shared this with me. Apparently it's video footage taken from a camera that survived the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Bush Learns to Read — This picture of Bush reading a children's book upside down is a fake. Read the explanation here.

Optical Illusion — A cool checkerboard optical illusion

The Case of the Keyspan Ad — Another case of a hoax photo. The KeySpan Corp. ran an ad showing some Long Island fishermen in order to show its deep ties with the Long Island community. The only problem was that the picture of the fishermen was actually taken in Seattle, which was obvious since they were holding up King Salmon, which aren't found around Long Island.