Has this appeared here before?

That looks like my wife driving. Amazing, and probably lucky.

The video is fake. It's part of a viral advertising campaign from a few months ago.

and they used to say that the camera never lies.

Steve S is correct... it's a hoax. If indeed the wing did come off the pilot would be in a powered phone booth

Yes, it has been here before.

I've never really understood that saying.

The first photographically recorded image of a person, by Louis Daguerre in Paris, 1839; shows a person on a street corner getting his shoes shined. The fallacy of the photo is that the street was actually full of people. The exposure length was long enough that the only people to be recorded was the man getting his shoes shined and most of the shoe shiner(his arms don't really stand out because they were moving too much) because they were the only ones standing still long enough to be recorded.

So if the first known photographic record of a person was also a visual fallacy, how can any photograph be considered an absolute truth? It is a visual slice of time, from a specific perspective, effected by focal length, exposure time, aperture size and media to which it is being recorded to. They can all effect the level of "truth" that a photograph might or might not show.

Yeah, but there was that Zlin that had a wing failure with one wing folding on it, he managed to land the darned thing.

click here

I've taken a ton of pics using film based cameras...35mm, 2 1/4, 4x5 and 8x10. In most instances, there has been some sort of manipulation of the image. Whether it be due to the things you mentioned, in camera manipulation of the view cameras, or darkroom trickery, the essentials of the image still ring true to a certain extent. They may look somewhat different then the original view, but it's not a total lie of what was there when the shutter was snapped.

With the advent of digital photography, we can easily manipulate any image into whatever our creative mind decides. It's much easier now then when you had to work with negatives and enlargers. I am way more suspect of any digital image then one made on film...of course, now you can just scan an analog image into digital and all bets are off.

I'm glad I grew up in a time when the image you saw from a camera could be reasonably relied upon as being the truth.

I'll leave the digital age to my children to cope with, but I feel bad for them trying to comes to terms with what's real and what isn't.

What a story!! It always makes me think about the wings on the glider being removable

In the case of the Louis Daguerre photo I mentioned, the man getting his shoes shined and the shoe shiner were actually there. As were the buildings etc... The fallacy comes in the absence of the rest of the people on the street. They were really there, but are not in the image. That is what I mean by the "level of truth". Never said that it is/was a total lie. Some are more true than others. Just remember that there really isn't such a thing as an objective (not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased) photo either. They are ALL subjective. The simple acts of choosing where to point the camera and when to trip the shutter makes them so.

Interesting... I've been a life-long practitioner of the craft, learned from an early age things can be portrayed "differently" by either mechanical manipulation or a photographer's actions at the time of exposure.

E.Steichen's portrait of J.P. Morgan, Karsh's of Churchill... Influenced by the photographer's actions. Izzy's "Sailor and Nurse" supposed "grab shot". Any of Diane Arbus' pix...

My take is its very dependent on the viewer's interpretation as to what makes the image "believeable" or not. Scott (Aerog) posted his photo of a farm field; so abstract on first glance we thought it everything from a pattern in cloth to digitally 'enhanced' pix of zippers.

I don't want to give the impression that I am distrustful or opposed to photography. Quite the opposite. I had my first camera at 4 years of age, a Yashica twin lens reflex. I remember spending the first week with the camera and not wanting to look anywhere except through the waist level viewer. Film was slow to come, mostly becasue I grew up on a ranch in the middle of Wyoming and the COOP in the closest town didn't carry 120/220 film. Once we moved to a bigger city I was introduced to the darkroom and soon after a "formal" education in photography began. That was while I was still in elementary school. By Junior High I was so far beyond the regular photography class that the instructors struggled with keeping me busy. In High school I was beyond the curriculum so much that I was taking independent study classes in photojournalism at the University. I was also running the photography section and darkroom for the school yearbook and newspaper, re-teaching the other student photographers how to print/process and see the picture. Our yearbook and newspaper won photography awards from the National High School Press Association. My senior year in high school I had so many student photographers that I barely lifted a camera for the yearbook. I have two separate degrees in photography, one commercial and one fine art. I have won national recognition for fine art photography and I have had commercial photographs published in numerous local/regional/national and international magazines. Photography has been a force in my life for the majority of it. I don't see that changing anytime soon either.

Gee...

I'm impressed, I thought digital cameras were great 'cause I would no longer left the lens cap on....

mehheh... that thought never crossed my mind, Shawn. My background and schoolin' are similar, too. I seem to think we've covered this ground before.

Thanks for posting that link, aerog. I heard that story a few years ago and Gliderman's post reminded me about it. I had never seen it in print, though.

You and I have covered it before I know. Was more for others... Felt a little much like bragging which I am usually the last to brag about myself. Also willing to point out that just because a photo is published doesn't necessarily mean that it is good, just means that its paid for. I've had to remind myself of that a few times when editors have chosen photos that I felt were barely worth submission.

Funny aside: History channel is running a program on the paid photographers who died in Viet Nam: Huet, Burrows, Flynn.

I was once told the military ~couldn't~ have real photojournalists. The antagonist would not accept that the EDITORS were the final arbiters of what went into release. The shooters were doing their job as photojournalists. This guy was so biased HE couldn't be objective. I found it funny he claimed to be one.

I gave up my PPoA membership years ago. Last national publication was a Good Housekeeping piece four or five years ago. Still lots of local credit lines but with a camera in every cell phone, the computer consultancy thing seems more lucrative now.