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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."
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.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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".
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".
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