Digital Forensics

HAS A PHOTO been severely altered? I’m sure you’ve seen examples of photo forgery lately in the news media. How exactly can you detect if a photograph is a composite of more than one original camera image? How can you tell if the clone tool has been used on an image, replacing scene detail at one part from another?

See the Digital Forensics webpage for original research by Hany Farid and his group at Dartmouth College.

Of particular interest is a large PDF file of lecture notes, which starts out with a number of famed doctored photographs from history, and then immediately jumps into complex mathematical examinations of digital images.

Ars Photographica

Ars Photographica
Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Cardinal Pecci
1867

Expressa solis spiculo
Nitens imago, quam bene
Frontis decus, vim luminum
Refers, et oris gratiam.

O mira virtus ingeni
Novumque monstrum! Imaginem
Naturae Apelles aemulus
Non pulchriorem pingeret.


On Photography
(translated by H.T. Henry, 1902)

Sun-wrought with magic of the skies
The image fair before me lies:
Deep-vaulted brain and sparkling eyes
And lip's fine chiselling.

O miracle of human thought,
O art with newest marvels fraught -
Apelles, Nature's rival, wrought
No fairer imaging!

This poem was set to music by Gavin Bryars, and is available on Amazon: On Photography - Bryars, Maskats, Silvestrov.