15 Activity: Trace Viral Photos

The following two photographs have been attributed to National Geographic shoots by the same tweeter  mentioned in the previous section.

If you are reading this on the web, go to it. If you are reading this book in PDF form, you’ll have to go find them at the Hapgood blog to use your Google reverse image search right-click/control-click action.

Bearing It

The first one is easy. Is this real, or fake? And are these National Geographic photographers or not? Is the bear real?

Swan Song

This second photograph is a lot harder. But is this real or fake? If real, can you find the name of the photographer in the swan as well as his nationality? If fake, can you find a debunking of it?

Truck Bomb

This next photograph is political. It was shared by a Twitter user who claimed it was a picture of an Irish Republican Army bombing. To paraphrase the poster – “This is London in 1993 after an IRA truck bomb. We didn’t ban Irish people or Catholics.” The poster is making a reference to recent moves to ban travel from Muslim countries to the United States.

Is this a picture of a 1993 London truck bombing? If so, how many people died and/or were injured? What was the response?

Going Rambo

Is this photograph real or fake?