There is a lot of evidence that we got to the moon at some point. Landing sites have been photographed by different parties. That doesn't mean apollo 11 necessarily landed on the moon. They had the technology, had the rocket, but couldn't afford failure. Especially after such a huge expenditure in the midst of vietnam and massive civil unrest. It would have made more sense to fake it. Even if they launched a real mission simultaneously so long as it didn't blow up on the launchpad they could claim success.
As for pics being faked. Most everything nasa puts out is faked in some way. It is how they communicate with the public. Whether staged shots, digitally manipulated images, false color, rendered images sewn together from countless other pictures. Ostensibly because a real image would be hard to get, wouldn't illustrate the point, or would be boring. Maybe they are hiding things maybe not. There are a lot of arguments either way, about the moon landings as well as just about everything since then, but no one seriously disputes that nasa fakes a lot of what they release publicly.