Swedish Nature Photographer Exposed as Giant Photoshopping Fraud

[accadacca]

gizmodo.com - How'd Terje Helles win the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's top prize for 2010? By capturing so many incredible shots of endangered species! And how'd he miraculously find all of these rare animals? On internet stock photography sites. So busted.

Helles' award-winning cheating was discovered by Swedish animal conservationist Gunnar Gloerson, who called him out on his own blog after noticing fishy photographs. Not only were Terje's photos suspiciously in appearance, but he was taking a highly suspicious number of them, noted Gloerson: "In less than a year, [Helles] became friends with six wild lynx in Mullingar! A total of 150 lynx observations at 9 months!...Most nature photographers are struggling for life for the perfect shot where the light is perfect and the wild animal is in the right place. This photographer seems to take such a picture [every] week!"

Helles' photos seemed too good to be true because they were

[BLUEberryBOB]

That green photo... Who in their right mind would say that is legit?

[accadacca]

That green photo... Who in their right mind would say that is legit?

Yeah I though the same thing.

[rockgremlin]

Yeah he's clearly a fraud but it blows my mind how everybody didn't catch on after seeing some of his other work. I looked on his website and found these other images. How the hell did he pass as legit all this time?

[BLUEberryBOB]

^ You've got to be ****ing kidding me.

[rockgremlin]

fixed it. apparently bogley likes the jpegs over the bmps...

[nelsonccc]

waaaaay too much time on your hands there justin......

[Deuce]

Yeah he's clearly a fraud but it blows my mind how everybody didn't catch on after seeing some of his other work. I looked on his website and found these other images. How the hell did he pass as legit all this time?

[Scott Card]

Yeah he's clearly a fraud but it blows my mind how everybody didn't catch on after seeing some of his other work. I looked on his website and found these other images. How the hell did he pass as legit all this time?

X2 on the Oh, how I loved the General Conference photo.

[live2ride]

man I wish I would have been there to see some of the sweet photos....Justin that is ASWESOME!!

[mhambi]

I think everyone is being too hard on the dude. I mean... who hasn't photoshopped pics of wild cats into their images?! Here's the last one *I* did...



He's spinning it wrong though... he should be like: "I feel so strongly about preserving these animals that I didn't want to put unnecessary pressure on them by photographing them in the wild. That's why I used photoshop" They'd probably give him another award!


In fact, I think I'm going to enter a bunch of wildlife photography contests using landscape pictures I find here on bogley combined with pictures of taxidermy mounts from the Bean Museum down at BYU...

[accadacca]

Nice work!

[mhambi]

Nice work!

Did you find all 9?

[Scott Card]

Yep, found all 9.