Photo of the Year: Email Hoax

**Big Booger** · February 19th, 2005, 11:59 AM

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...oftheyear.html

A photograph that has been circulating on the internet showing a shark leaping out of the water to attack a helicopter, is a fake. The composite image, which claims to be National Geographic's "Photo of the Year," was spliced together from a U.S. Air Force photo taken near San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and a photo of a shark from South Africa.

The photo of a breaching great white shark was taken by South African photographer Charles Maxwell [see the link to his Web site at the bottom of this page]. The Air Force photo of an HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter was taken by Lance Cheung. They were spliced together by an unknown person, and reportedly began making the rounds on e-mail in August 2001.

"I'd like to make contact with the person who did this—not to get him or her into trouble, but because it's a lot of fun and it is a good job," Maxwell said. "However, I must make clear that I would not like to see this happen to one of my photographs again. It is wrong to take images from a Web site without permission." Maxwell said he has sold quite a few photographs as a result of the attention the hoax has drawn to his work.

The e-mail containing the hoax photo says:

AND YOU THINK YOUR [sic] HAVING A BAD DAY AT WORK !!

Although this looks like a picture taken from a Hollywood movie, it is in fact a real photo, taken near the South African coast during a military exercise by the British Navy.

It has been nominated by National Geographic as "THE photo of the year".

**rohitk89** · February 19th, 2005, 15:24 PM

the way they said they made...sounded quite simple...hopefully ill take the honours some year

**egghead** · February 19th, 2005, 21:04 PM

not as scary as the time I went to Africa and snapped this picture.

http://img111.exs.cx/img111/2726/badhair2.jpg

**rik** · February 20th, 2005, 04:11 AM

**rohitk89** · February 20th, 2005, 09:15 AM

**tarun** · February 20th, 2005, 10:17 AM

IS it really nominated for the NAtgeo photo of the year?

It doesnt look very real tho. Do they accept 3d(and other not real) images?
PS: Nice sig egghead.

**rik** · February 20th, 2005, 23:56 PM

Originally Posted by tarun

PS: Nice sig egghead.

Didn't you know that "our" egghead is really Slash in disguise?

**cash_site** · February 21st, 2005, 00:44 AM

good shark pic, they only recently realised that Great White could breach the surface... many surfies on the Gold Coast of Aus could have told you that