An Instagram influencer with over 216,000 followers raised eyebrows recently after she posted stylish professional-quality photos of herself lying on the ground immediately after she supposedly crashed her motorcycle.
BuzzFeed News reports that Nashville-based lifestyle blogger Tiffany Mitchell posted a series of photos on July 31st after a motorcycle accident that she claims left her scraped up and shaken.
Mitchell says that a photographer friend of hers named Lindsey Grace Whiddon was riding alongside her and shooting photos at the time, and that the photographer continued to shoot in the aftermath of the crash.
Here are some of the photos Mitchell shared on her Instagram account:
“We played around for a couple hours before heading back up to Nashville around 7:30, and on a secluded two lane stretch, I misjudged a curve, took it too fast and my bike went off the road,” Mitchell wrote in the lengthy caption. “It slid through the grass and I hit the pavement. I had my helmet on so my head was fine, but I scraped up my left side. I was in absolute shock laying on the side of the road.
“Scroll through the pics to see how much of it Lindsey captured! Unreal. I was scared, and relieved, and so thankful I could move all my joints and that I never lost consciousness. My friends were at my side immediately, an ambulance arrived within 10 minutes (CRAZY fast), and sweet strangers loaded my bike onto their trailer to haul it back to my house for me. I was in a haze the entire time.”
Although her post was initially met with a flood of comments from fans and well-wishers, others soon began to question and criticize Mitchell, leading her to take down the post.
Some people questioned why she would share professional-looking photos of an accident that looks more reminiscent of a staged and posed photo shoot. Others accused her of glamorizing vehicle accidents. Still others suggested that one of the photos even contained product placement paid for by the water company Smartwater (something denied by both Mitchell and Smartwater, which tells BuzzFeed News that no relationship exists between the brand and the influencer).
As controversy arose, Mitchell posted a followup Story with her reaction to the controversy and with clips showing some of the injuries she sustained from the crash.
She also posted a photo and message in defense of her actions:
“[…] I want to talk about the reactions I’ve been getting to the article @buzzfeednews posted sensationalizing what I went through that day, and making a mockery of the post I shared,” Mitchell writes. “As a result, I’ve been accused of staging the accident to get attention, using it as a product placement opportunity with a water company, and other things I can’t even wrap my head around.
Mitchell says she has always been transparent about her life through Instagram, and that she discloses every single sponsorship relationship she has.
“Accusing someone of faking or exploiting an accident is extremely serious—because what if you’re wrong? It really happened to me, and I was scared. I really was injured and had to recover. I was in shock laying on the side of the road, having flashbacks to when I lost someone very important to me.
“Friends were by my side, strangers called an ambulance, waited while I was checked out and then gave me a ride home.
“When I found out my professional photographer friend who I’d been shooting with earlier took photos of everything, I was completely moved. I shared this on my feed with humans who have been on a journey with me for years because I knew they would understand what it meant to me and I understood what it would mean to them.”
(via BuzzFeed News via Fstoppers)
Image credits: Photographs by Lindsey Grace Whiddon via Tiffany Mitchell
