Authors
Kushel HM is a mechanical engineer-turned-journalist, who loves all things football, tennis and films. He was with the news desk at the Hindustan Times, Mumbai, before joining Newschecker.
A photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has gone viral, in which you can see a photographer clicking a picture of the PM, while lying on the ground. Social media users have been mocking the photo, saying that being a photographer of the PM is a taxing job, ranging from 18-20 hours a day for all 365 days of the year.
Fact Check
A reverse image search of the photo did not throw up the exact picture, but instead, led us to another image, showing the PM paying tributes to Mahatma Gandhi at Gandhi Smriti in New Delhi on Gandhi Jayanti. The image was carried by many news organisations, including The Mint, The Siasat Daily and was also tweeted by PM Modi on his official handle.
On analysing the two images, we can easily spot that the two images are the same. Barring the photographer lying on his back, both the images have matching frames, including PM Modi’s attire, posture and security detail in the background of the photo. The Siasat Daily has credited the photo to PTI.
We further analysed the viral image and noticed what appears to be a watermark text on the photographer, indicating that it could be a stock photo. Using the keywords “photographer lying on ground stock photo”, we tried to locate the source of the image of the photographer, which led us to this stock photo from Alamy.
The image was titled, “Photographer lying on the ground while photographing a large building from a different perspective.”
While mirroring the stock image, we can see that this is the same photographer as seen in the viral photo of PM Modi, confirming that it was edited.
Conclusion
Viral photograph of PM Narendra Modi and a photographer lying on the ground to click his picture was found to be a composite of two unrelated images.
Result: Altered photo
Sources
Tweet by PM Narendra Modi, October 2, 2021
Stock photo, Alamy
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Authors
Kushel HM is a mechanical engineer-turned-journalist, who loves all things football, tennis and films. He was with the news desk at the Hindustan Times, Mumbai, before joining Newschecker.
