Claim: this is a photo of airplane flying over Times Square, New York

Photo credit and copyright: Andrew Thomas

The plane is obviously not real. It has been added later. Unfortunately I could not find the original version of this photograph for technical analysis. Here are the Fotoforensics results using a copy of the photo. Based on the Error Level Analysis (or ELA), it is clear that the plane has been added later. But without a high quality original photograph, the technical analysis is not reliable enough.

Luckily this photograph has been discussed in the media. You can find a good article (in Spanish) from Verne. The journalist contacted Andrew Thomas who replied:

The plane was added as part of a competition against a few friends where we use the hashtag #putaplaneonit…

People saw the picture and everyone liked and shared…

Do not call it a photoshopped image… I call it a manipulated photo

I will call it as a photoshopped image. People usually use Photoshop when they manipulate photos. Similar example: Nikon awards price to badly shopped photo, hilarity ensues.

Apparently you can still buy this photograph called “Times Square Winter Lookup” for 60-150 USD. This raises at least one question: why don’t they tell to potential buyers that the plane has been shopped – #putaplaneonit – or simply call it as a “creative photo”?