Famous Wildlife Photographer Busted For Using Stock Images

Nobody knows better than Award-winning wildlife photographer Terje Helleso how hard it can be to get that perfect shot in an out-of-the-way location. That's why he used stock photos. The 47-year-old photographer passed off hundreds of stock photos as his own over the course of several years. From the article: "On Wednesday, a deeply regretful Helleso spoke to local radio. He gave economic problems as a reason, but mostly it was about his own unreasonably high demands on himself to be successful, he said. 'I was under pressure, mostly from myself, and I gave in to temptation. Looking back, I’m surprised that I got away with it for so long, and that I managed to keep up appearances to my wife and everyone else,' he said."

Comments

An obvious reminder

[hardtofindanick]

On Wednesday, a deeply regretful Helleso spoke to local radio

Regretful because he was caught. If he wasn't caught, probably he would have been quite happy.

Re:An obvious reminder

[MacTO]

I realise that it is trendy to be cynical of anyone who has gained any form of celebrity, but I think that it is also appropriate to remind people that the person behind the spotlight is as human as anyone else that you meet. Just like us, the make mistakes. Just like us, sometimes they are regretful because they were caught. And just like us, sometimes the regret that they express is sincere.

I don't know this photographer, so I don't know how sincere that regret is. On the other hand, I'm not willing to let cynicism overwhelm me by simply assuming that he is insincere.

Re:An obvious reminder

[mwvdlee]

Indeed. "Regretful" is when you confess BEFORE anybody finds out the truth.

Re:An obvious reminder

[circletimessquare]

yes, we're human: we get in car accidents, we trip and fall down the stairs, we say things we don't really mean

but we don't betray our own principles over an extended period of time in a calculated conscious manner

that's not being human, that's being a scumbag

"I don't know this photographer, so I don't know how sincere that regret is."

his regret is 100% sincere: he regrets being caught

save your human empathy for people who deserve it. this guy doesn't deserve it

Re:An obvious reminder

[Hazel Bergeron]

Everyone deserves empathy. That's how empathy works. If you're applying some formula to decide whether someone's worthy then you're not really demonstrating empathy at all.

Re:An obvious reminder

[Teancum]

Rule One of Life -- Never Get Caught
There is no appeal, no reprieve, no forgiveness, no redemption, and no hope. Once you are caught, you can never be uncaught.

The problem here is the concept that anything is ethical and proper until you are caught. The real "truth" is that he shouldn't have been doing this in the first place, regardless of if he was caught or not.

Yes, I know human nature is that you act impulsively and ignore ethics and principles. That is why we try to pound them into kids at an early age with the remote hope that eventually some of that is going to sink into their skulls that unethical and immoral behavior eventually leads to ruin and it is better for everybody including yourself if you don't even start down that path.

Sadly, some adults either never learned those lessons or have deliberately chosen to ignore them.

BTW, I do think you can have "forgiveness" after a fashion. Those who you've wronged can have restitution, you can admit what you did was wrong, and you can "do the time" if you have broken criminal law. Somebody who can fess up, admit they have done something wrong, try to make things right and not do it again is to me somebody much more worthy of my sympathy and mercy than somebody who acts like a jerk and pretends like it never happened in spite of being caught red handed. You might not be able to be "uncaught", but you can be forgiven for what is human weakness if you try to be better next time. That is for me what is hope that humanity can become better in the future, however you define "better".

Re:An obvious reminder

[Kjella]

Empathy and sympathy does tend to get mixed up a bit. I can understand that it's embarrassing and humiliating to be exposed as a fraud, that is empathy. But I don't have any sympathy for him, because he dug that hole for himself. After all those lies he has very little credibility when he claims to regret it, that's not me starting out as a cynic but a direct result of his actions. Besides there's nothing inherent to empathy that means I should believe in the good of all people, only that I am able to put myself in their shoes. And putting myself in his shoes I see a self-serving prick who is now seeking sympathy from the gullible. Perhaps in time he will be able to prove that he truly wants to make amends, but it'll take more than getting caught with the hand in the cookie jar and saying "I'm sorry" to do it. At least with me.

Re:An obvious reminder

[professionalfurryele]

Cynicism is the word people who don't live in the real world misappropriate to describe people who do.

Re:An obvious reminder

[hey!]

Aside from any question of another human being *deserving* our empathy, our empathy doesn't perform any useful function for *us* unless we're willing to extend it to people who are unsympathetic. For example, consider the following part of the article summary:

He gave economic problems as a reason, but mostly it was about his own unreasonably high demands on himself to be successful,

The reason that this man is a fit object for *empathy* is that unreasonable demands on ourselves to be successful is something we all feel now and then. The reason he is not a fit object for *sympathy* is we don't necessarily do something foolish or unethical because of it. Unrestrained ambition for undeserved position is what did Macbeth in. Combine that with a little hubris and you have the most common formula for stupid, self-destructive behavior there is.

Empathy guides are sympathy to those who deserve it, and enables us to learn from the examples of those who don't.

Re:An obvious reminder

[hey!]

This guy would be an example of misplaced priorities, even if he didn't get caught. Why perpetuate this *particular* fraud? Surely as frauds go it's not the most financially rewarding.

I think it's because once he got started in the field and got a little taste of respect from other people, he got hooked. Everybody likes getting external validation, but he set the respect of others over his own respect for himself. This man's offense combines hubris (that he wouldn't get caught at such an obvious fraud) and insecurity in a manner that's worth thinking about.

Ironically this man wasn't egotistical enough; at least not in the right way. He didn't value his own artistic integrity over the approval of others. That's an artistic virtue that isn't always attractive or likeable (Picasso springs to mind), but it is an honest attitude that sustains an artist in hard times and doubles the rewards in good times. There's even a kind of pig-headed magnificence to it.

“When I was a child, my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk you'll end up as the pope.' Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.”

-- Picasso

Yeah, that Picasso was an egomaniac who thought he was a creative genius, but he was right, and he could back it up any time he cared to. If anyone claimed he painted the way he did because he didn't have the technical ability of his nineteenth century predecessors he could prove them wrong if he felt like it, which he seldom did because he was secure in his ego. Picasso knew he deserved his success in the way few of us ever do.

When you read a novel with a character who is successful because of plagiarism and gets away with it, that character is always pathetic. In movies or stories with a sympathetic con-man protagonist (e.g. Terry Pratchett's *Going Postal*), they guy is sympathetic because the art of the con is more important than the financial payoff. Plus, he's usually shown plundering rich, undeserving people.

Re:Yeah.

[Gaygirlie]

...Helleso, who is famous not only for his art, but also for being a strong advocate of keeping digital photography real and speaking out against manipulation or theft of material...

Ha ha is right..

Well, it's easy to preach something you're not following yourself. ...he'd make a fine politician.

This is pretty old news here in Sweden by now

[bergelin]

This is pretty old news here in Sweden by now. He won the prize of wildlife photographer of the year and has held several courses, so I'm pretty sure he cashed in on this.

When the accusations started, he said that he was completely innocent and a lot of people believed him thanks to his reputation (one of the most - if not the most famous - wildlife photographers in Sweden.) However, he wouldn't show the raw pictures which added on to the suspicions.
A large "investigation" started on internet forums and eventually people found the original pictures of animals that he had pasted onto his pictures. Like http://a.yey.nu/QHL7RE.jpgfor example (mirror reversed). This forced him to admit of course.

The funny thing is that he has been outspoken against editing of photos and said never to use Photoshop on his images: "I'm a photographer, not a pixel artist".

Re:It's not the first time this has happened.

[Pesticidal]

A better analog is the indie PC game Limbo of the Lost that stole all its backgrounds from numerous other commercial games. And the developers would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids...

Re:stock photos on the net turned up

[TaoPhoenix]

So whose stock photos are they though?

Why is this "idle" and not a 400Million (YourCurrencyHere) copyright case?

He preached against manipulation

[Anonymous Coward]

That he used stock images is just one small aspect of the story, the whole story is so much larger than that.

It should be mentioned that he preached never to retouch or edit the pictures you take. He claimed himself to pre-visualize the whole image, only to create the image in the camera and carefully take that one shot (in contrast to what many other wildlife photographers say, that they take series of pictures of animals in the wild in hope that one of them will be the one that catches your eye). One of the more outrageous claims was how he framed the composition of two flying dragonflies over a pond. In the description of the image he told us of all the choices he made before pressing the shutter. Today these claims seem more like boasting about his own ability. Not all his images are fake and he is a good photographer, just not as good as he claims and he puts it on a bit thick when talking about his own skills. In his own blog he even critizised Steve Bloom for manipulating images.

Also, he was a fervent advocate of hunting down people using other photographers pictures without permission. In his blog he lashed out at a photo site when they used one of his pictures to illustrate a article about him. The editor apologized for the mistake and offered to pay for the used images. Another time he came down really hard on one of his fans, having used one of his photographs as inspiration for a painting she did. He himself pointed out the differences and how that painting would be impossible as a photo. Then he uses stock photo images in manipulations and claims that they are his own (unedited) works.

Unfortunately he has a big following of fans that still defend him. He has groomed, through various photography forums and his own blog, an almost sect-like cult around him. Any mediocre images he posted was raised to the skies and any critizism was hammered on by the fans with comments like "you don't know how to appreciate his greatness", "he has progressed so much further in the field of photography than you, how dare you criticize him", etc.

At Fotosidan.se (a Swedish photography forum where he was very active for a few years) one member claim that he noticed that several of Hellesøs images got top votes, earning them spotlight positions on the website. Several voters had very typical undistinctive names (the swedish equivalents of "John Smith"), never posted any work themselves, only rated Hellesøs images and only gave top scores. The member brought this to the administrators attention but the practice continued. When Fotosidan started logging the IP-addresses these accounts were deleted according to that member.

Hellesø claims to have asked for forgiveness, but in fact, all he has done is taken down his blog (with the evidence, luckily Google caches it still) and the regret he wants us to think he shows is overshadowed by him victimizing himself. He even went so far as to compare the search for truth about his alleged original work as a witch hunt like he was Khadaffi or Breivik (the norwegian bomber and mass-murderer). So far he has done very little to deserve any forgiveness. He has lied from day one until he was revealed big time. Until the first hard proof came he claimed in radio interviews to be subjected to a plot, even when wildlife experts questioned why pictures of a lynx taken in the summer still had the winter fur, and that he never had seen any traces of the lynx prey, despite him claiming to see 150 lynx sightings in 19 months (much more than skilled wildlife experts and hunters have on record). Also he claimed to have found the racoon dog in a place of Sweden where it should not have be, and the hunt started to find it since it might be a carrier of rabies. He has used his pictures and "expertise" as proof in political debates.

The man is a liar and a hypocrite and should really be treated as one, but I couldn't care less about him and his, IMHO, uninteresting and uninspiring work. But this affair has so many layers to it, ethics, legal, political, et

Re:Discussion on flashback

[HopefulIntern]

Är aktiv jägare och läste på jägareförbundets blogg om naturfotografen Terje Hellesøs bilder och huruvida dom var äkta eller inte. Själv blev jag mycket skeptisk när jag kollade in hans sida, men jag är helt okunnig vad gäller fotografering så jag frågar expertisen här vad ni anser. Jag är inte okunnig vad gäller djur och natur och Terjes berättelser om hur han "blir vän" med lodjur etc. låter väldigt tvivelaktiga. Terjes sida där han även försvarar sina bilder:

"Am active hunter, and read on the Hunter's [organisation] blog about the nature photographer Terje Helleso's pictures and whether they are real or not. Personally I got very sceptical when I looked at his page, but I am completely ignorant with regard to photography so I am asking the experts here what you reckon. I am not ignorant with regards to animals and nature, and Terje's explanations of how he "makes friends" with deer etc. sounds very suspicious. Terje's page where he even defends his pictures:"

Stock photo websites quickly updating

[CODiNE]

iStockphoto is the web's original source for user-generated, royalty-free stock photos, illustrations, video, audio and Flash. Whether you're a designer, advertiser, entrepreneur, professional photographer or blogger, we have millions of affordable images, vectors and clips to help you tell your story.

It's an emotional trap

[Kamiza Ikioi]

He might regret getting caught, but like criminals, they often regret what they are doing. People sometimes get into something, and then feel trapped. Imagine a man overcome by desire who cheats on his wife. He royally screws up, but if he stops now, the other woman may tell on him. So, the affair lasts for years. And eventually, the woman does tell anyways.

He's regretted that he'd be found out since day 1, not just after he was caught. We often assume regret begins after they are caught, but that fear is always present. It is the emotional cost for the unethical activity, and only a true psychopath could not feel it.

Unless you are suggesting he's clinically psychopathic, then it was about being caught, but not brought about by being caught.