After seeing an article about someone purportedly discovering the original photo source for Shepard Fairey's now-famous poster, I did a little digging myself and think they're wrong. The image I found on this site, seems to me to be a much better match.
intrepidliberaljournal.blogspot.com/2006/10/reminiscing-a...
Particularly note the eyes.
ragesoss, willieabrams, Linkletter, Weston Deboer, and 12 other people added this photo to their favorites.
ragesoss 53 months ago | reply
I think you're right. Interesting, since the other one has been accepted as the source by a Reuters photo blog and other media.
tomgralish 53 months ago | reply
I got a couple other comments on my blog about this photo.
blogs.phillynews.com/inquirer/sceneonroad/2009/01/mystery...
It looks pretty good. Even the shadow on the collar is the same.
I am in Washington covering the Inauguration, but as soon as I get free will look into this more.
Please let me know if either of you, or anyone else finds the source.
Thanks and great detective work!
Tom Gralish
The Philadelphia Inquirer
tgralish@phillynews.com
Darran Gange 53 months ago | reply
Great discovery man! I think this is an AP photo, that's what I could discover through a TinEye search anyway.
Pitty so much has been poured into that alternate theory!
stefyania 53 months ago | reply
www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-19/who-to...
scandal
stevesimula 53 months ago | reply
Wow, pseudowhis, that TinEye is great! And you're right it looks like it's AP. Thanks for the tip on that one.
Huh... Yeah, looks like that daily beast blogger guy jumped into his Reuters/exhibit thingy just a little to quickly, eh? Oops!
johnwmacdonald 53 months ago | reply
excellent sourcing. "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."
ragesoss 53 months ago | reply
Tom Gralish turned up a version of the file with metadata, so now the photographer and date are known:
blogs.phillynews.com/inquirer/sceneonroad/2009/01/found_a...
stevesimula 53 months ago | reply
Yeah, ragesoss, he told me about that... cool that he found the photog.
MikeWebkist 53 months ago | reply
You definitely found the right one. My match was close, but you got it spot on. Congrats.
stevesimula 53 months ago | reply
Hey, Mike, yeah, well yours was pretty damn close.
Perhaps I had the added benefit of being a portrait artist myself. When I saw the thing about "flipping' the image, I thought, no way would a portrait artist flip a subject. Likeness goes out the window.
ragesoss 53 months ago | reply
stevesimula, I'd love to use this in the Wikipedia article, if you'd be willing to release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike or Creative Commons Attribution license.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_"Hope"_poster
stevesimula 53 months ago | reply
ragesoss, sure you're welcome to it.
ragesoss 53 months ago | reply
Thanks! It's in the article now.
F. Lennox Campello 53 months ago | reply
Terrific work! I'm going to write about it right now and link to this page...
Lenny
F. Lennox Campello 53 months ago | reply
By the way... excellent detective work!
Leila__ 53 months ago | reply
Hey stevesimula: awesome work. You certainly don't need TinEye! You have an eagle eye. We did a bit of work using our image recognition technologies to confirm your finding: you are bang on.
blog.ideeinc.com/2009/01/23/will-the-real-obama-hope-phot...
Modesto Alexandre 53 months ago | reply
Yes we can ? :)
stevesimula 53 months ago | reply
Hey Leila... Thanks.
What you did on your post was what I wanted to do (create a rollover image thingy to present my findings) but I was lazy and just did a sequence. Nice stuff...