Royal Photographic Society - Gabriel O'Shaugnessy

The Royal Photographic Society was today left red-faced when an image of a man smoking a pipe, featuring very crude Photoshop cloning was presented on their home page. An EPZ member, Sugar Jones, spotted the shoddy piece of work and brought it to the attention of the forums. EPZ member Mike Otley then phoned the RPS in Bath to let them know. The picture, by Gabriel O'Shaugnessy ARPS, taken on a Canon EOS 10D in June 2004, was swiftly removed, but not before a number of EPZ members had commented on the ham-fisted efforts.

When we rang the RPS to ask what they thought of the standard of cloning work in the picture, Andy Moore of the RPS said, "I can't really comment. It's something that people in the panels would look at." When pressed over whether images are checked before uploading to the home page Andy added, "The pictures need to be updated on a regular basis, once a month, and it was time for this one to be done. Images will be updated regularly from now on, this one was overdue."

Rather than let Andy wriggle off the hook, we pressed him whether there was a person responsible for checking the quality of the images uploaded to the home page. He admitted that there was and then finally came clean by saying, "This was an error on our behalf. The quality was not acceptable. The cloning wasn't very good." He added that, "this was a one-off and it shouldn't have been on the home page."

You can read what EPZ members thought about the picture here.