Politics

How Deadline Detroit Solved The Cop Car Image Mystery

August 22, 2013, 9:54 PM

Sometime Thursday afternoon, you probably heard that a local photographer named Bobby Alcott said he believed the skyline image on Detroit's new police cruisers and ambulances was pirated from his work. The story made its way around social media and was covered by several media outlets including WDET and the Detroit Free Press.

The image on the cars wasn't Alcott's.

However, he had good reason to think it was. Back in March, when the Downtown Detroit Partnership announced it would donate police cars and ambulances to the city, they released mock-ups of those vehicles featuring a skyline image that bears a striking resemblance to Alcott's photo. The images are so similar that it's seemingly implausible to believe they're not identical. Since they were donating vehicles to the city, maybe the DDP assumed Alcott would happily (and unknowingly) donate his image to the DDP. 

When the police cars and ambulances were unveiled Thursday, they looked like the mock-up designs released earlier in the year. However, upon closer inspection, Deadline Detroit's Lauren Davies concluded they didn't use the same image.

In the image above, you can see Alcott's original photo (top, and used with permission!) as well as the police car mock-up image (bottom, left) widely circulated since March and the hood of an actual cruiser (bottom, right) unveiled Thursday in Campus Martius.

The photo on the actual vehicles has a slightly different color palette than on the mock-ups. That's easy to manipulate with photo editing, but a few differences would be hard to manipulate:

  • Changes in the light patterns in windows, notably on the large, left building of the Ren Cen. In the proposed design photo, the cluster of lights on is a few floors higher than in the actual design.
  • The Penobscot is visible in the actual design and not the proposed design.
  • The building behind the Blue Cross Blue Shield building is visible in the proposed design, but just barely visible in the actual design.
  • One Detroit Center is very visible behind the Ren Cen in the proposed design, but isn't in the actual design.

In short, it seems like the photo actually on the cars was taken from an ever so slightly different angle than the photo in the proposed design. 

Jeff Wattrick reached out to Alcott and showed him this analysis. He concurred the photos are different. He's also pleased the situation is resolved.

"I'm very happy that they decided not to use my pic. I appreciate the analysis, as I had not seen them in person yet," Alcott wrote in an email. "Maybe my life can go back to normal now."

He also posted this message on Facebook:

My good friend Jeff Wattrick from Deadline Detroit showed me photos of the ACTUAL cars they rolled out today, and I'm thrilled to say that they are NOT using my photo! They bought a photo from a Canadian artist, from what I understand.

That being said, the DDP is still responsible for using my photo for the mockups and rollouts that they disseminated across the media for months. However, when it came to the cars, they evidently did it right.

I'm very happy this is over so we can all get on with our lives. However, if anything positive comes out of this, I hope that people start respecting copyright of all types.

In the age of Google Images, it can be difficult to stay on the right side of the line with photo copyrights. Sometimes a placeholder image used temporarily in an internal mock-up accidently finds its way into public space. Sometimes what seems like a generic courtesy photo is actually someone else's copyrighted work. These things can happen even when you operate with the best of intentions, but that makes them no less problematic.

The lesson here, and this should apply doubly to well-funded organizations with access to blue-chip creative agencies, is no matter how many times something (i.e. the Detroit skyline) is photographed, make sure you have rights to the particular photograph you're using publicly. 

That way we can all avoid these embarrassing misunderstandings.


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