I have taken my time getting around to the work done recently by Miles Mathis on the Columbine event. I did a run-through this morning. I am going to offer a couple of very general observations, not intended to be criticisms, and with caveats:
I respect Miles and his work. This will not be a take-down by any means. From reading him I learned how to analyze photos, and these days watch them easily disassemble before my eyes. Even these days with so much AI all about, there is a too-smooth quality about fake photos. AI is going to get better at this stuff, and will soon learn to match the graininess, lighting and lines in earlier work. In the future, it will be nearly impossible to tell reality from fiction in photos. But when I did my work on Columbine, it was very easy. I first noticed that the supposed victims and grievers were actors, shedding no tears. They only grimaced for the cameras. Ah, amateurs! Then I noticed that the shots of kids (victims) were obviously staged, asking myself “Why was the photographer in that place at that time?” In other words, photos were done by professional photographers brought to the scene to record fake as real.