I've actually been sitting on this one for a while, after a reader named Michelle linked me to this Hajj fauxto, but I've been too busy to post on it the way I wanted to. So without further ado, let's get it on...

In the middle of the al-Reuters/Adnan Hajj photoshop scandal a reader named Michelle sent me a link to a story on Folha De S. Paulo, a Brazilian paper, who was using another Hajj photo I hadn't seen yet. The neighborhood looked similar to the one seen in the original, famous Hajj photoshop, but a lot of those neighborhoods look the same (to me anyway). The obvious difference was how colorful the image was. It looked like Miami or something and you might remember that in the original Hajj scandal, in addition to adding smoke, Hajj darkened the image, dulling down a lot of color.

A few days later while I was obsessing over another obvious photoshop, this one by Tyler Hicks at the NY Times (still not giving up by the way), I flipped through the other images in the Times slideshow and noticed that the first image was identical to the one on the Brazilian site.... well, almost.

Below are the two images. First the one from Folha De S. Paulo in it's original size, followed by the one from the Times which won't fit in full size, but you can click it to see the full size

Aside from the obvious, the Folha image is trimmed at the top and sides when compared with the Times image, but still clearly the same exact photo. As for the obvious difference, I don't think I need to explain how colorful the Folha image is, and how colorless the Times image is. Based on Hajj's history, I'd have to guess that the photoshop is the darker one shown at the Times, although it actually looks more "real". For some reason the colorful one at Folha seems almost cartoonish.

It get's weirder though. Neither image has a caption that indicates a date, but we can get an approximate because the URL of the Times version reveals that the page was created on July 25, 2006. Likewise the URL of the Folha page that uses the image shows that it was created on July 26. That's obviously not that big of a deal, because maybe the Brazilian paper was just a day behind. But I had to think back to Michelle's original comments when she emailed me the link to the image. She thought it was the same image as the busted smoke photoshop. (see original UNphotoshopped Hajjgate image below)

Obviously it wasn't the same image, but it did seem similar for some reason. I opened them both in my lame Microsoft Picture It! program and quickly realized that the original smoke photoshop fight nicely on top of this other one, and it was in fact a photo of the same exact neighborhood. The odd part was that the known photoshop had a date of August 5. Well, not that "odd" considering what we've all revealed about Hajj and other fauxtographers over there, but humor me. My first thought was, "did he take this other photo on the same day, but date it differently (like others we've seen)?"

Giving the undeserving benefit of the doubt I decided that maybe the same neighborhood was bombed twice. Perhaps not all the Hezbos were killed in the first bombing raid, and the next one was to finish them off. Odd that it would be almost two weeks later, but whatever. I don't have Hajj here to photoshop me a smoking gun, so I let that part slide. But the important point to remember was that we clearly had yet another Hajj photoshop that had gone unnoticed. Though I'm still unsure which was photoshopped, the one at the Times or the one at Folha DSP.

By the time I noticed this, Reuters had pulled the Hajj images so I wasn't able to see if there were others BUT I was able to find 3 more images of that same neighborhood, by other Reuters photographers. Two of the images were taken by an annonymous photographer known only as "STRINGER", dated August 6, and the other by Bilal Jawish dated August 7.

Again, I have no evidence that this neighborhood wasn't bombed once in late July then 3 days in a row almost 2 weeks later, but given what we've all seen in the past few weeks, it's suspicious to say the least, especially when 2 of the photographs are taken by "STRINGER" the same week that Adnan Hajj was canned. Even more odd is the fact that two of those images submitted to Yahoo! each have two different captions.

Are all of these curious things just coincidences? You be the judge. But one thing is for sure... We have another photoshop from Hajj, and then a bunch of other Reuters photos of the same neighborhood we've now proven he's photoshopped twice.

Below is a video I put together entitled "Adnan Hajj Reloaded" which includes all of the images mentioned. Scroll past the video for the individual images which are linked to their Yahoo! locations. (I'm not including captions because as I said, two of them have two captions each, pick your favorite)

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Make what you will of all this, it's time for the Randman to get some shut-eye. No matter what you think of those other odd photos (that I don't claim represent any kind of smoking gun), the obvious FACT we see is that yet another Hajj photo has been shopped, yet remains online. I thought after Reuters pulled all Hajj images that the Times might too, but then I realized... wait, that would indicate an ounce of journalistic integrity. And a paper that continues to hold up an image of a black man's face photoshopped over the head of an Arab woman in a headscarf ain't gonna pull anything. (Again Tyler Hicks, that isn't over and it never will be until you or whoever photoshopped that image is fired and publicly humiliated)

Note to Readers: If you can offer an insight on any of these images, or have others, or any comments what so ever... in addition to commenting below, feel free to email me at Randy at Rightwinged dot com.

Related:
Allah, Rusty, and Dan Riehl are all closely watching another case of potential fauxtography. Yesterday you probably heard about a Reuters vehicle that was mistakenly hit with two Isreali missiles.... the strange thing is that, like many vehicles supposedly hit by Israeli missiles this month, they look more like they were hit with sledghammers (at worst).