The Case of the Well-Groomed Peachick

Today I saw a disturbingly cute image on Facebook.

Image entitled ‘Baby Peacock’ posted on my Facebook page by a friend. [1] No provenance provided.

I’ve never seen a baby peacock before, so for a few seconds I thought it was a real photo in soft focus. Does it look like a baby peacock to you? It doesn’t look far from what I might have thought a peachick might look like if I’d ever given it any thought before. But then of course I thought, this can’t be right.

But knowing something isn’t right and demonstrating that it isn’t right are two different things. I searched online for photos of peachicks, and found surprisingly few. I guess that it is more common to take photos of the handsome adults. Though I only found tiny peachicks with modest plumage, I couldn’t be sure there wasn’t a stage when the feathers grew out like those of Baby Peacock. But then I looked at the eye shape of the gallery of peacocks I’d found, for example Rolf Brecher’s photo below. Compared to Baby Peacock, the fledglings’ eyes were far less round and smaller overall. Clearly the image I was investigating was manipulated, at least in respect of the eye shape. And of course exaggerated round eyes are popular these days – think Manga, where over-large eyes facilitate emotive meanings.

Photo by Rolf Dietrich Brecher from Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0 [2]

The older peachick photos I found to compare to Baby Peacock sported only tan and beige camouflage feathers. I idly thought that Hans Christian Anderson would have been better off choosing a peachick to feature in his story The Ugly Duckling, because these baby birds certainly demonstrated little evidence of the beauties they would grow to be! By contrast with the somewhat drab and awkward appearances of maturing peachicks like those in the Christian Stobbe photo below, the peachick plumage in Baby Peacock gave an overall impression of having been elaborately groomed in a professional salon, like Cristiano Ronaldo going to the World Cup after-party. The feathers were modified also.

Christian Paul Stobbe (2020) Unsplash [3]

So, the evidence suggests that Baby Peacock is either a fake photo, a manipulated image, or a rather impressive computed image. Certainly it is not a photograph in the true sense of the word.

Manipulated or machine learned?

If not a photograph, then the other possibilities are an image that has been ‘Photoshopped’ or completely generated by computing. Was there a way to figure out where Baby Peacock came from? Some provenance of any kind? Perhaps Google’s image search tool could help.

Searching with Baby Peacock image in Google [4]

Hmm, that was helpful! Not only did the tool find a copy of the image, it found several, plus some similar images, from which I was eventually able to identify Baby Peacock (via adobe.stock.com) as the work of an artist named Hatoru.

Visiting Hatoru’s Adobe Stock Images page [5], it quickly becomes obvious that Baby Peacock is one of several computational images created by Hatoru. A particularly noteworthy giveaway of AI-generated images is extra appendages, and, in looking closely, Baby Peacock has a visible extra (misplaced) toe on its left foot. The right foot looks rather suspect too with toes that appear forked like a snake’s tongue.

Comparison of peachick feet in (A) photo by Brecher and (B) Baby Peacock by Hatoru

Other images in Hatoru’s series of baby birds suffer similar problems with their feet. I have not been able to learn anything more about Hatoru at all. I don’t even know if Hatoru is a person or organisation. This is unfortunate, because it makes it difficult to simply reach out and ask, or to attach useful provenance to the image to enlighten future viewers. One thing that’s obvious from Hatoru’s body of work: a joy in generating fanciful images of baby birds!

Real or Fake?

Conclusion? Baby Peacock is an image generated through computation. Not a real photo, though certainly a real computer-assisted creative work. Lovely in its own way.

However, though I must say that though this image has entertainment value, and art is an important part of our lives and society, the real photograph of a peachick this search produced is so much more meaningful and compelling. I think baby peacocks are beautiful just as they are. I’m sure their parents think so too. Which one do you like better?

Brecher peachick photo [2] on left, Hatoru Baby Peacock AI art [1] on right

References
[1] Image entitled ‘Baby Peacock’ posted on my Facebook page by a friend. No provenance provided. Upon investigation identified as Hatoru (date unknown) https://stock.adobe.com/contributor/211290107/hatoru?load_type=author&prev_url=detail&asset_id=571212905 Used under fair use provisions of copyright law. Accessed 8 July 2023
[2] Rolf Dietrich Brecher from Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0 (2015) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baby_Peacock_%2818131813108%29.jpg Accessed 8 July 2023
[3] Christian Paul Stobbe (2020) https://unsplash.com/photos/sIyqGNExcDE Accessed 9 July 2023
[4] Screen capture of Google Image search using [1] above.
[5] Sabrina Caldwell (2023) Zoom-in and compare, peachicks’ feet in [2] and [1] above.

 

Galactic gaffe

Since its deployment last month, the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has shown us exciting views of the universe, near and far. Last week, French physicist Etienne Klein, tweeted a new JWST image of our nearest neighbouring sun, Proxima Centauri. A mere 4.24 light years away, Proxima Centauri is a small Class M star: a red dwarf. Here is the photo he tweeted, with the caption “Photo of Proxima Centauri, the star closest to our Sun, 4.2 light years from us. It was taken by the JWST. The level of details … a new world is revealed day after day.“

This image was shared and retweeted thousands of times by his followers. Here is his tweet:

Wow, is this an extraordinary new photo of our nearest stellar neighbour? With detail only possible from the new JWST with its “four scientific instruments … utilizing customized lenses, filters, prisms, and specialized machinery … to capture precise scientific observations of the universe“? [1]

Unfortunately no. It is a slice of chorizo sausage.

Eventually some of his followers started to question the image, to which Dr Klein responded, “In light of certain comments, I feel obliged to clarify that my tweet showing a pretend photo of Proxima Centauri was a joke. We must learn to beware of the arguments of authorities as well as the spontaneous eloquence of certain images.” [3]

Although the physicist came clean about the image, no doubt somewhere in the world there are several somebodies who think that, up close, Proxima Centauri looks like a slice of chorizo.


Thanks to Professor Tom Gedeon, Curtin University and ANU, for bringing this image to my attention.



References
————
[1] https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/ Accessed 7 August 2022
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-05/french-scientist-apologises-for-chorizo-star-joke/101305334?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=mail&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/ Accessed 8 August 2022
[3] “Au vu de certains commentaires, je me sens obligé de préciser que ce tweet montrant un prétendu cliché de Proxima du Centaure relevait d’une forme d’amusement. Apprenons à nous méfier des arguments d’autorité autant que de l’éloquence spontanée de certaines images….” https://twitter.com/EtienneKlein/status /1553765864553472003?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1553765864553472003%7Ctwgr%5E6d18cccebe685624ba24b3b53e33ea8638a7c57e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.9news.com.au%2Fworld%2Fspace-telescope-image-chorizo-apology%2Ff9ee6533-69e1-4d36-b99d-f0ed2c03de25 Accessed 10 August 2022

 

Susan Sontag

In our century we play fast and loose with the definition of a photograph. Many of the images we call photographs today are really chimera, fusions of photographs and liberally applied artistic renderings.

Sontag’s genius was that, in 1977, in an era without Photoshop, she could see the special nature of a photograph and how, through the scientific, objective capture of light, it is intimately involved with the real.

Photo by Peter Hujar First published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Susan Sontag in1966)

“… first of all a photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real, it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.”

Susan Sontag (1977) The Image-World, On Photography, Penguin, p154

 

Lunar eclipse 26 May 2021

References

All photos in video by Sabrina Caldwell and are licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0

Photos are changed only via scaling and cropping to match the moon size from photo to photo.

 

The Case of the “Osprey with Red-winged Blackbird Hitching a Ride”

There is a photo going viral at the moment: a Red-winged Blackbird being towed on a branch by an Osprey.

Osprey with Red-winged Blackbird Hitching a Ride ?

One of the Facebook posts where I saw this image had 887 comments [2], almost all of which were from believers. They thought the photo was lucky, awesome, insightful of nature. They thought the photographer was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time, and an amazingly patient nature photographer to have gotten such a photo.

“How amazing and what is more thrilling to be there with a camera to capture this photo” P. Slatyer

“It would have looked even more amazing if a dog was hanging on to the stick too!” L. Friel

“Probably the safest place to be” I. Jonssen

“…a million dollar photo as far as I’m concerned. And possibly the only one of its kind in existence…” S. Brown

“The blackbird is enjoying his private jet.” S. Atkins

“This is one for the record books. Fabulous shot.” E. Roberts

“Osprey is probably building up its nest. Black had best take off before it gets there.” J. Owens

However, this is an interesting case of the misleading element of the photograph being the words accompanying it.

If you look carefully at the bird’s talons, it appears to be holding the branch very lightly, with only a few of its talons. An Osprey is a powerful bird, able to carry fish up to 2 kilos or the occasional rabbit. In theory, an Osprey could carry the branch and the bird. But if the smaller bird was actually resting its weight on that upper twig, the branch would have revolved so that the bird was lower than the photo seems to indicate. The only way the bird could be sitting on an upper twig of the branch would be if the osprey was holding the branch VERY tightly. Which it isn’t.

Grip tight enough for a branch, but not a branch and a bird

Let’s look at the blackbird. It is a Red-winged blackbird (male since the females are brown). If you zoom in you’ll see that the blackbird isn’t clutching the branch at all, in fact the sun is shining on the part of the branch that would be under the bird were it ‘hitchhiking’.

Red-winged Blackbird in flight

The creator, Jocelyn Anderson Photography, cleverly words the description to infer, not state that the blackbird is getting a free ride on the branch: “A Red-winged Blackbird looking like it’s getting a free ride on an Osprey’s stick. The Blackbird was focused on driving the Osprey away from the marsh, while the Osprey was focused on bringing back a good stick for the nest.” [1]

However, the title of the photograph is so misleading as to cause the photo to reach the state of ‘fake’.

The appearance that the blackbird was riding the stick is just a fortuitous juxtaposition of the two birds and the stick. It is an interesting, even amazing photograph. Just not what it purports to be. Sorry.

References

[1] https://jocelynandersonphotographyshop.com/collections/new-prints/products/osprey-with-red-winged-blackbird-hitching-a-ride Accessed 20 May 2021

[2] The Fabulous Weird Trotter https://www.facebook.com/thefabulousweirdtrotter/posts/341255787376016 Accessed 20 May – 8 July 2021.

Images used in accordance with fair use provisions of copyright law.