Courtesy of Jr. Deputy Accountant
Officials in rural Huili (south-west China) have found themselves having to explain the above shot, which very clearly shows three dudes floating above the street. I mean if you’re going to do it, at least try.
The Guardian:
The saga began on Monday when Huili’s website published a picture showing, according to the accompanying story, three local officials inspecting a newly completed road construction project this month. The picture certainly portrayed the men, and the road, but the officials appeared to be levitating several inches above the tarmac. As photographic fakery goes it was astonishingly clumsy.
The outraged – or amused – calls began to the county’s PR department, which immediately apologised and withdrew the image. The explanation was almost as curious as the picture itself: as other photos showed, the three men did visit the road in question, but an unnamed photographer decided his original pictures were not suitably impressive and decided to stitch two together.
"A government employee posted the edited picture out of error… The county government understands the wide attention, and hope to apologise for and clarify the matter," a Huili official told the state-run Xinhua news agency.
As always, the Internet does not disappoint. In a matter of hours, other ridiculous Photoshop creations appeared showing the government officials from Huili in all sorts of interesting positions, such as:
and, my personal favorite:
God bless you, Internet.