Eyes Roll Over 'Scare Force One'

A portion of the "Scare Force One" photograph was clearly altered which, in light of the commotion caused by and the fallout from (see: The Capitolist's Heads Roll Over 'Scare Force One') the staged photo opportunity of April 27, raises the question, why wasn't the image just Photoshopped altogether?


The foreground of the photo is one of the two Boeing 747s that bear the presidential seal, flying from left to right of the image space and gaining altitude in the sky above the Statue of Liberty in the background, facing toward the bottom left corner.

A ferryboat creates a small wake in the Hudson River off the left shoulder of the statue, heading toward Jersey City and Newark, which fade out into the horizon.

In the bottom right corner of the photo, there is an abrupt and unnatural fade, enveloping much of the pier that extends from Liberty Island out into the Hudson River, toward Manhattan and Brooklyn. This fade could not have been created by anything on Liberty Island, nor by Air Force One, nor by the plane from which the photograph had been taken.

Considering the angle of the window glare in the upper right corner of the photo, it is possible that part of the interior cabin of the photographer's plane, which was higher in altitude off the right wing of AF1, was visible in the photograph, and the fade is a clumsy edit to evoke water, although obviously masking the pier.

In fact, it is the pier that gives the unnatural fade away. In the real world, a natural shadow created in the plane's interior would never blend with the pier, hundreds of feet below: it would naturally blend with the window frame, which would be visible in an unaltered photograph. The pier, however, becomes indistinct by a process of blending called feathering, through which an obstructing masking layer and an obstructed background layer gradually trade levels of opacity. In this case, the pier blends into the water, a dangerous thing to naturally occur at a national monument.

Additionally, beginning even at 200 percent magnification of the full-size image, but unmistakable at 400 percent magnification and above, one can notice a series of geometric gradation that occurs at regular intervals, the telltale effect of a man-made shadow, rather than a natural shadow.

Another possible explanation was that there was something unsightly or distracting (or top secret!) in that few hundred yards of the Hudson River that day.

This, of course, demonstrates the difficulty of capturing a flawless midair shot from a plane, of a plane, above a monument in a river that closely neighbors the site of a horrific aerial attack within the past decade.

The simple solution is to have taken a photo of Liberty Island at the desired angle, match a photograph of (or render) AF1 at a relative ratio given its distance from the statue, crop, copy and paste. It's even better than the real thing, and nobody would have been scared, or forced to resign.

Note: the author has five years of professional experience with a company now on the Fortune 100 list, manipulating documents and images. It is a skilled assessment of the full-size image, not conjecture, that the bottom right corner unquestionably was edited.