The Western Morning News is rightly proud of its reputation for stunning pictures.

So a letter from a reader accusing them of photo trickery caused a stir in the newspaper's Plymouth offices.

Joan Rendell wrote in to ask: "...who does the photographer think he is fooling with his photograph of poppies and a bee?"

She continued:"Nice picture of what look like cuckoo flowers in a meadow; it didn't need to be spoilt by having out-of-proportion images superimposed on it.."

Irate Joan thundered: "You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all the people all of the time. Your photographer obviously does not have a very high opinion of the intelligence of Western Morning News readers. I've heard of gullibility but this takes the biscuit."

Picture editor, Michael Cranmer, replied: "Photographer Richard Austin used a Canon digital camera with a 14mm lens (which is the equivalent of a 20mm on a standard film camera).

"I can assure you that the picture was not altered or faked in any way. Richard tells me that the petals of the flower on which the bee was sitting were actually touching the lens."

Mr Cranmer also refuted the suggestion - made tongue-in-cheek by a fellow regional picture editor - that the bee was dead.

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