CAMELOT Theatrical Special Effects

Right after 9/11, an e-mail began making the rounds containing an attached photo of a poor guy on top of the World Trade Center with a jet airliner headed straight for him in the background. The e-mail said that the photo was from a camera recovered from the wreckage of the WTC and quickly became the most-circulated e-mail on the Net. Months later, a young Hungarian named Peter Guzli identified himself as the creator of the fake photo to which he had added the wrong kind of plane at the wrong time of year on the wrong side of the building but it was too late. Millions of people had seen the picture and so did you, didn't you?

A new art form had sprung up called "Photoshopping" named after Adobe Photoshop, a graphics editing program designed mainly, we must conclude, for falsifying photographic evidence and keeping practical jokers off the streets. Dozens of photos containing "The Tourist Guy" began popping up on websites everywhere, placing Peter at the scene of every tragedy in history from the Hindenberg disaster to the Kennedy assassination.

This is special effects gone hilariously amok, nor has the fun stopped. I just received an e-mail today containing a sequence of eleven photos from a pier in Ireland where a strange series of events had occurred involving a car and two wrecker trucks. You've received it too, right? Don't worry; you will.

Funny thing is: the photographer at the scene only took ten photos. Where did this eleventh one come from? Ah, the "Photoshop Phairy" has been busy again!

posted by C. J. # 6:55 PM