#fakenews
So if you have just clicked through from social media you have just been looking at a photoshopped motion version of a photoshopped shot (above) that went around the world many, many times.
It began as a very real and very late drop for Kai Lenny photogpraphed by ace French water photog Bastien Bonarmme. The real shot with real colour you can see below. The original actually made the cover Surf Sessions 30th anniversary issue, Surfing Magazine (RIP) and Tracks.
The real thing
But apparently that wasn’t good enough and some bright spark photoshopped it into an unbelievable late drop and posted it for likes on his social channel. (Without crediting either photographer or surfer.) From there millions of surf fans liked and shared it around the globe. Surfers, surf fan pages, Facebook, Instagram all reposted with little thought to the guy who took it, or even if it was real. It basically went wild. I don’t know if surfers were sucked in, or knew it wasn’t real but didn’t care. It was amazing to watch.
Then, just as we thought that may be the end of it, last week another Facebook page sent it off for the motion blur treatment, and well, here it goes again…
We contacted Bastien first time round for his thoughts and he was very philosophical about seeing his work go global with no payment or recognition. “At first I was annoyed, then I actually sold the real shot off the back of the coverage so that was ok…”
Second time round, well we thought we’d just tell the story and hope some of you out there will follow his Insta page; @bastienbonnarme
