Incredible photo. More like incredible hoax. Photo: Shutterstock
Earlier this week, an armed man entered a D.C. pizza parlor to investigate a conspiracy theory that promulgated online. Beyond putting the lives of patrons in danger, the incident exposed the danger of fake news and the importance of the old adage, “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”
Just days later, another morsel of albeit more innocuous fake news made the rounds on Twitter – an image of a shark leaping out of the water supposedly taken by Bob Burton which allegedly won National Geographic’s photograph of the year.
Wow. Check out @NatGeo‘s Photograph of the Year by Bob Burton. pic.twitter.com/deyKZDEzL6
— BASTILLE (@bastilledan) December 4, 2016
At first blush, it looks like an incredible shot. And definitely something that, if real, would have totally won a National Geographic photo contest. The problem is the photo isn’t real, and neither is the annual photo contest.
The photo is actually not a photo at all. It’s a computer generated stock image by Russian illustrator Alexyz3d currently available on Shutterstock.
Apparently the phony photo caused such a stir that even National Geographic felt compelled to respond.
“When a man on Twitter claimed to be National Geographic‘s chief photographer, several photo editors at the magazine assembled to discuss. ‘Have you ever heard of this guy?’ None had,” the magazine explained.
“The man, who goes by the alias Bob Burton, claimed (falsely) to have taken National Geographic‘s photo of the year (an award we don’t have) of a shark leaping out of the water (which is clearly fake).”
