Toronto Chooses Cheap
The City of Toronto’s web site has a page promoting its new Pan Am BMX course used in the recent 2015 Pan Am Games. The photo shows a number of female competitors lined up at the starting gate.
The problems with the photo are that the event shown is not from the Pan Am Games. The track is not the city’s new BMX course. The location isn’t even in Toronto. Oops.
Some sports web sites in South America assumed this was a Pan Am photo and used it in their news articles about the Pan Am BMX event. Those South American web sites were probably confused because the Toronto Pan Am Games itself initially used the same picture on its BMX pages. Oops.
The city’s new BMX venue was in operation long before the Games opened. There was plenty of time for real photography. Other municipalities hired photographers to shoot their venues. Toronto could’ve chosen to support a small business by hiring a local photographer. But it decided not to.
Ontario Choose Cheap
The Ontario provincial government today ran a half-page photo ad in The Globe and Mail to promote Pan Am venues that will be available for public use after the Games end.
The photo used in the ad, seemingly from the Milton velodrome ($225/hour to rent the track), might look a bit odd. The people don’t match in size or perspective, the lighting and shadows are off, the blue banner on the floor looks weird, the “finish line” doesn’t match the track, the depth of field is unusual, and the crowd in the background isn’t right:
It may be difficult to see in the small photo above, but by looking at the original ad, it’s obvious that the picture is a composite of several images and at least the camera flashes and finish line were painted in.
The Milton velodrome was up and running long before the Games started. There was plenty of time to hire a photographer to do real photography. The Ontario government could’ve chosen to support a small business by hiring a local photographer. But it decided not to.
