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This thread continues to be so fascinating...!

Has this been linked to before?

https://jamesaconrad.com/media/Solway-Spaceman-photo.html

It's a very detailed investigation into the photo and has a lot of decent images of the photo, location etc.
I've just looked at that, and have read most of it. There is some mildly interesting stuff in there, but I see the author has been careful to omit the images where the person in the blue dress has had the exposure corrected, and other manipulations applied to show the blue of the dress, and many details that are absent from the images he has posted. This would be annoying enough, without the inclusion of quite a bit of other information that really is not relevant to the story. Perhaps he is trying to tie the military stuff in to support his opinion, but no matter what he thinks of the images that show clearly the same colors and details in the other photo of the person in the blue dress, he should address them. He has certainly seen them. Ignoring them is not honest, in my opinion.
 
There's nothing sinister in there only being one picture. I'm old enough to remember cameras with film and we very quickly got into the habit of only taking one picture of any specific subject and just taking your chances that it would come out right. In these days of phone cameras we've lost sight of the fact that film and processing was relatively expensive, so you would 'ration' your shots. My kids still berate me for not being able to break that habit and only taking single pictures of any event!
I'm now in the habit of taking a few photos, and delete the poorer examples to reduce the odds and keep the one that has better detail, or colour definition.
 
I own a book of photographs called a Century of Carlisle that is written by one Jim Templeton, who I assume is the same person as "our" Jim.

Apologies that this doesn't contribute much to the thread, just thought I'd mention it!
 
I'm now in the habit of taking a few photos, and delete the poorer examples to reduce the odds and keep the one that has better detail, or colour definition.
This is one of the benefits of digital photography, when using film you are limited to the amount of pictures on a roll and the cost of both the film and the processing, another benefit of digital photography is you don't have to buy film or pay for processing.
 
A friend used to work on news paper and still as quite a few articles printed in mags,
I have done quite a bit of photography for them one thing I always remember was
what I was told, "Film is cheap" so take many pics some will always stand out, and
with digi there's no excuse take many and use the best,
I find that when taking them something tells me as the button is pressed that that is
the one.
 
A friend used to work on news paper and still as quite a few articles printed in mags,
I have done quite a bit of photography for them one thing I always remember was
what I was told, "Film is cheap" so take many pics some will always stand out, and
with digi there's no excuse take many and use the best,
I find that when taking them something tells me as the button is pressed that that is
the one.
I can understand that for a news paper, something like film and processing is comparatively cheap, they probably had their own processing lab, but for your average person, film was quite expensive and processing was exorbitant, especially at the time the photo was taken.
 
I was sold on the idea of it being the blue dress. However, when you look at the One Show recreation, the right arm on the original Templeton photo appears too bulky in comparison to mum's arm in the Templeton blue dress photo and also the One Show recreation girl.

So I'm feeling as if I've come full circle.
 
I was sold on the idea of it being the blue dress. However, when you look at the One Show recreation, the right arm on the original Templeton photo appears too bulky in comparison to mum's arm in the Templeton blue dress photo and also the One Show recreation girl.

So I'm feeling as if I've come full circle.
It's "iffy," but yes 'WeirdExeter,' that was the first thing that I'd noticed when others were suggesting that the background image was purely that of Mrs Templeton - didn't appear to look correct, mainly because the image of the person (which appears to look like a young girl) on her knees in the foreground photo, was taken much closer to the camera than that of the background image, and yet arm thickness is less than that of the image taken much further away from the camera, and for that reason it doesn't make good sense for suggesting that the background image is that of Mrs Templeton.
 
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It's "iffy," but yes 'WeirdExeter,' that was the first thing that I'd noticed when others were suggesting that the background image was purely that of Mrs Templeton - didn't appear to look correct, mainly because the image of the person (which appears to look like a young girl) on her knees in the foreground photo, was taken much closer to the camera than that of the background image, and yet arm thickness if less than that of the image taken much further away from the camera, and for that reason it doesn't make good sense for suggesting that the background image is that of Mrs Templeton.

Agree, the blue dress female does look like a young girl.

Also, something else that has been flagged up on here before is that the 'spaceman' is entirely cloud coloured. That is, I'm looking out why window right now and there are large white clouds with shades of grey here and there. If the black 'visor' is a passing bird caught out a strange angle (plenty of those passed off as UFOs in the media) then you are left with a cloud-coloured 'thing; in the sky where clouds are found. True, the image is very well defined, and on the whole clouds aren't, but the colours match for those conditions.

But personally I'm starting to edge back to something paranormal....
 
Spaceman in a blue dress. That's not a Templeton on the ground in the other shot, but the same spaceman, just not inflated. So the Templetons were correct, none of the other family members appear in any of the photos. Apparently the spaceman was not visible to anyone, but only showed up in the photos. Wow, this case is really interesting!
 
I can understand that for a news paper, something like film and processing is comparatively cheap, they probably had their own processing lab, but for your average person, film was quite expensive and processing was exorbitant, especially at the time the photo was taken.
I still use film cameras. (I have digital as well - fortunately I'm a Pentaxian and unlike any other brand I can use all my film camera lenses with my digital cameras) . Film processing is still very expensive - it always has been for the amateur, which is why a lot of us stuck to B+W film as it was cheaper to process. You absolutely did not bang off a few frames and hope you'd come up with something good.

That approach doesn't work terribly well anyway. It's too easy to miss THE shot. A press photographer would only do that when there was no alternative, for example being stuck in a seething mass outside a court or society event. If they had the chance of choosing their moment in a considered way they'd always prefer that.
 
Not at all bizarre; being hyper focused on one thing can make you less aware of things going on in the background!

He was hyper-focussed on getting a close-up photo of his daughter in her new dress. As a competent and experienced photographer, his attention would be on controlling what's in the background of the image. Standard procedure for a portrait. It's probable that his wife, like him, knew that photobombing the background here would be a fail and a wasted opportunity, after all they were specifically where they were in order to get the picture. Yet you say they both allowed this to happen.
 
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He was hyper-focussed on getting a close-up photo of his daughter in her new dress. As a competent and experienced photographer, his attention would be on controlling what's in the background of the image. He and his wife both knew that photobombing the background would be a fail. Yet you say they both allowed it happen.
My dad used to take lots of photos of my brother and I, about the same time period. He was quite an experienced photographer, no professional but he liked taking pics. You would not BELIEVE what's in the background of some of the shots. So hyper focussed on making sure his kids were clean, facing the right way, smiling etc, that the background literally was not happening as far as he was concerned. (see also my post about knickers).
 
My dad used to take lots of photos of my brother and I, about the same time period. He was quite an experienced photographer, no professional but he liked taking pics. You would not BELIEVE what's in the background of some of the shots. So hyper focussed on making sure his kids were clean, facing the right way, smiling etc, that the background literally was not happening as far as he was concerned. (see also my post about knickers).
Fair enough but 'kids messing about' didn't happen here. It was pretty straightforward stuff, if everyone was paying attention. That nobody saw Mum photobombing the shot under such circs seems possible but unlikely.
 
Fair enough but 'kids messing about' didn't happen here. It was pretty straightforward stuff, if everyone was paying attention. That nobody saw Mum photobombing the shot under such circs seems possible but unlikely.
Maybe. I'm still firmly on the sharp side of Occam's Razor though.
 
link please!
It's back on page 18 of this thread. Where I said..

It's also very very common to only focus on the thing you are taking the photograph of and somehow 'tune out' whatever is going on in the background. Never taken a photo of your new couch only to realise that it also features several pairs of your pants which are drying on the radiator behind it?

...just me, then.
 
Did the photographer use an SLR camera or a "point and click" type? When using one of the latter type many years ago, I found that very often what you see through the tiny viewfinder is not what the lens sees. I found myself having to compensate for this offset. Perhaps the photographer didn't see the figure because it wasn't in the viewfinder?
 
That another woman, wearing a remarkably similar blue dress, crept into the photo seems even less likely though.
There's also the other daughter, who was present that day but didn't appear in the famous photographs.
 
I hate

Please let me clarify; I don't deny that photobombs exist but, aside from being a plausible explanation, I find it doesn't quite fit the circumstances.
I'm pretty sure I didn't even imply you thought that. My point is that things in the background routinely go unnoticed by photographers of all sorts. Looking at a collection such as the one I linked makes it obvious that many (at the least) of those shots would have been differently composed if the photographer had any idea there was a dog taking a shit immediately behind the subject of the picture. Humans make mistakes all the time. Our sensory apparatus doesn't really work the way we imagine it does, either. We have to exclude background clutter in order to focus on the task at hand in a myriad of circumstances.

There is a very plausible explanation for the "spaceman" that does not involve a hoax, dishonesty, or anything of the sort. There are other, vague and farfetched, ideas about it, none of which make any sense to me.
 
What is it about the shitting dog photobomb thing anyway? Our dog shits twice a day, for a minute or so at a time. I don't think the numbers support so many accidents being random.
 
I accept all that in principle but I simply doubt that the photographer 'got it wrong' despite nobody noticing. I make no claims that the personage in the background is a 'spaceman' incidentally. Both sides seem far-fetched to me. Whatever it is/was is something 'other'.
 
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