User-generated content is rife with risk and opportunity.

The opportunity for it to deliver remarkable images is made clear on an almost-daily basis, be it in the midst of a crisis like the Boston Marathon bombings, Hurricane Sandy, or simply … Read more

Associated Press
David Green's cell-phone photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev appearing to move away from the scene of last Monday's bombing almost seemed too good to be true, Associated Press Director of Photography Santiago Lyon said in a phone call Friday evening.

"When the picture began to circulate, we were suspicious of it because when we looked at it closely it seemed to have been a composite picture," Lyon said. "But what happens often with digital imagery is when you're looking closely at low-resolution files you see things that are misleading, because of the way the pic is compressed or the size of the file."

A cropped version of Green's photo (AP Photo/David Green)

So the AP asked Green, a Florida businessman who'd completed the marathon and was watching other runners finish when the bombs went off, for a high-resolution version of his pic. The time stamp and the resolution convinced the photo department it was real. After the AP did a little reporting on Green -- making sure he'd run the race, that he was who he said -- they struck a licensing deal. (more...)