A lot hinged on the veracity of the picture — the low-resolution image furnished to Teneycke lacked critical metadata that would have helped determine the time the picture was taken. However, the report that accompanied the picture referred to those metadata. (Pierre Karl Peladeau
President and CEO of Sun Media Corporation)
Before sending your hoax photos to anybody at Sun Media, you better make sure that you doctor the EXIF metadata because they will check – trust me. You’re a busy lobbyist and you don’t have time to learn all about this nerdy stuff (metadata wazzat???). No problem, this is what you do.
First, get your doctored photo and open it with a metadata editor like ExifTool There are others available but you’re in a rush and there is an election afoot and you have a ton of disinformation that has to get out – today!
Well, as luck would have it, there is no metadata on your pic. Don’t panic! Your Iggy pic backstory is that he was in Kuwait so you need to copy legit metadata from a pic taken in Kuwait. Go ask Google Image search, type “Kuwait army” and restrict your results to large pictures. The reason that we are selecting only “large” images is that we want the original/unedited large size pics taken by some US military photographer – the exact ones downloaded off the camera. They are always huge files. I found one from Military Sealift Command from 2007 which is good enough for our demo. Save it to your current working directory as we are going to copy the EXIF metadata to make it look like our hoax pic was taken in Kuwait.
Using ExifTool, copy all the metadata from the authentic Kuwait photo to your fake Iggy pic (only one command – w00t):
$ exiftool -tagsFromFile metadata_source.jpg not_ignatieff_exif.jpg
Now, if you’re particularly lazy or busy you can stop there since the metadata is now copied. If you have more time on your hands you can actually edit the individual entries and geocode the photo. Check out what we did:
$ exiftool -list not_ignatieff_exif.jpg ExifTool Version Number : 8.56 File Name : not_ignatieff_exif.jpg Directory : . File Size : 78 kB File Modification Date/Time : 2011:04:27 13:18:53-07:00 File Permissions : rw-r--r-- File Type : JPEG MIME Type : image/jpeg JFIF Version : 1.02 Exif Byte Order : Little-endian (Intel, II) Make : NIKON CORPORATION Camera Model Name : NIKON D2X Orientation : Horizontal (normal) X Resolution : 300 Y Resolution : 300 Resolution Unit : inches Software : Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows Modify Date : 2007:09:24 12:06:07 Y Cb Cr Positioning : Centered Exposure Time : 1/180 F Number : 13.0 Exposure Program : Aperture-priority AE ISO : 100 Exif Version : 0221 Date/Time Original : 2007:08:29 10:47:40 Create Date : 2007:08:29 10:47:40 Components Configuration : Y, Cb, Cr, - Exposure Compensation : -2/3 Max Aperture Value : 4.0 Metering Mode : Multi-segment Light Source : Unknown Flash : No Flash Focal Length : 20.0 mm User Comment : Sub Sec Time : 00 Sub Sec Time Original : 00 Sub Sec Time Digitized : 00 Flashpix Version : 0100 Color Space : sRGB Exif Image Width : 2100 Exif Image Height : 1395 Sensing Method : One-chip color area File Source : Digital Camera Scene Type : Directly photographed CFA Pattern : [Red,Green][Green,Blue] Custom Rendered : Normal Exposure Mode : Auto White Balance : Auto Digital Zoom Ratio : 1 Focal Length In 35mm Format : 30 mm Scene Capture Type : Standard Gain Control : None Contrast : Normal Saturation : Normal Sharpness : Normal Subject Distance Range : Unknown GPS Version ID : 2.2.0.0 Compression : JPEG (old-style) Thumbnail Offset : 934 Thumbnail Length : 5386 Current IPTC Digest : 460cf28926b856dab09c01a1b0a79077 Application Record Version : 2 Copyright Flag : False Global Angle : 30 Global Altitude : 30 XMP Toolkit : Image::ExifTool 8.56 Format : image/jpeg Compressed Bits Per Pixel : 2 Date/Time Digitized : 2007:08:29 10:47:40-04:00 Flash Fired : False Flash Function : False Flash Mode : Unknown Flash Red Eye Mode : False Flash Return : No return detection Color Mode : RGB ICC Profile Name : sRGB IEC61966-2.1 Creator Tool : Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows Metadata Date : 2007:09:24 12:06:07-04:00 Derived From Document ID : adobe:docid:photoshop:0f10c753-6154-11dc-9f27-a9bb9c4b68e4 Derived From Instance ID : adobe:docid:photoshop:0f10c753-6154-11dc-9f27-a9bb9c4b68e4 Document ID : uuid:FF3F520BB86ADC11827AB2BAB20EBAFA Instance ID : uuid:319A5A0FB86ADC11827AB2BAB20EBAFA History : Quality : 60% DCT Encode Version : 100 APP14 Flags 0 : [14], Encoded with Blend=1 downsampling APP14 Flags 1 : (none) Color Transform : YCbCr Image Width : 640 Image Height : 480 Encoding Process : Progressive DCT, Huffman coding Bits Per Sample : 8 Color Components : 3 Y Cb Cr Sub Sampling : YCbCr4:4:4 (1 1) Aperture : 13.0 Shutter Speed : 1/180 Create Date : 2007:08:29 10:47:40.00 Date/Time Original : 2007:08:29 10:47:40.00 Modify Date : 2007:09:24 12:06:07.00 Thumbnail Image : (Binary data 5386 bytes, use -b option to extract) Image Size : 640x480 Light Value : 14.9 Scale Factor To 35 mm Equivalent: 1.5 Circle Of Confusion : 0.020 mm Field Of View : 61.9 deg Focal Length : 20.0 mm (35 mm equivalent: 30.0 mm) Hyperfocal Distance : 1.54 m
Note: This is a parody entry. Don’t send any doctored pics to Sun Media. Also, don’t trust metadata as proof of anything.