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But once you've seen the colour-corrected version of the photo, which clearly shows the mum, you can't unsee it.
Wow, that's clear. Right shoulderblade and bra-strap rear clip. Mild reddening of elbow joint. Hint of hidden profile, turning to/from right.

Headscarf around shoulders?
 
Once you look at that 'color corrected' photo...it's obvious it's not an alien and it's the Mom ....so how was that missed for all those years...?
 
Once you look at that 'color corrected' photo...it's obvious it's not an alien and it's the Mom ....so how was that missed for all those years...?
Possibly because colour correction has only relatively recently become available?
 
Once you look at that 'color corrected' photo...it's obvious it's not an alien and it's the Mom ....so how was that missed for all those years...?


I don't think it was missed exactly, as far as I remember Mrs Templeton had always been offered as a possible explanation - I must admit that I never quite saw it until I saw the colour corrected version, which made it so much clearer - I could never quite understand how the 'visor' with the white 'helmet' could be someone's head, but it makes absolute sense now.
 
The elbow seems odd only if you interpret the figure as facing toward you. The darker area on the lower part of the head is often mis-interpreted as being a visor on a helmet.
What IS the dark area? It looks bizarre.
Also, if that's a woman, she looks like a wrestler, she's huge!
 
What IS the dark area? It looks bizarre.
Also, if that's a woman, she looks like a wrestler, she's huge!

The back of her hair, I believe. It looks like she's wearing something white on the very top of her head, maybe a headscarf that's been pulled forward.
 
The back of her hair, I believe. It looks like she's wearing something white on the very top of her head, maybe a headscarf that's been pulled forward.
I dunno, still looks weird to me. A hood on a short sleeved top? A white hat or headscarf? Why the hood then?
The head also looks too small.
 
A hood on a short sleeved top?
This suggestion fits really well with what we see. And it give me an idea....
2018-10-01 20.45.04.png


Look what happens when I rotate the picture about 15 degrees to the left, as viewed.

I immediately get the impression of someone running. That curious elbow becomes naturally bent, and there's a hint of balanced movement from what little we see the left arm.

We then see (by tilting the picture even more to the left) that the 'hood' may represent the metacentre horizontal datum relative to gravity...
2018-10-01 20.53.32.png

Lightweight hoods tend to bounce with movement to a position of neutral repose in the vertical axis. But note how there is a horizontal displacement to the right, belayed by the neck (as viewed)....just as there would be from the wind/draught effect, as someone runs or dives rapidly into a light headwind.

Ignore the grain-lines, look at how this does start to feel like someone pitched forwards, moving fast.

And could that be a face profile along the left-hand side, leading edge??
2018-10-01 21.05.12.png

Does that look like a raglan sleeve join, tailing down at a lazy 45deg from the 'hood'? Is that dark blob under the 'hood' simply a trapped shadow?

Hmm....
 
Looking back to page 10 of this thread, at @bakelite brain 's colour-corrected version of the picture....I hadn't noticed the other context-setting photograph below it:
jlqqb.jpg

Isn't that........................................^^^^ the mum, wearing the blue sleeveless dress?
 
Looking back to page 10 of this thread, at @bakelite brain 's colour-corrected version of the picture....I hadn't noticed the other context-setting photograph below it:
jlqqb.jpg

Isn't that........................................^^^^ the mum, wearing the blue sleeveless dress?

Indeed it is. That's what forumists here have been saying for the last 4 years at least. I'm just astonished that the "spaceman" nonsense has persisted so long!
 
The story still has the Men In Black coda... which is interesting.

Not really. Even Templeton dismissed that as two guys "pulling his leg" .

I reckon every last drop of woo factor has most definitely been expunged from this story.

The only really interesting thing is how desperately people want to believe in aliens and such like.
 
I have never believed in the photos but it as always struck me what a strange angle the space man is to the daughter
 
From the outset, I’ve been a proponent of the Spacemum theory because I don’t think alien Spacemen wear bras.
To be honest, I find it pretty dumbfounding that some people can’t read a photograph.

Meanwhile at Antarctica.
Tourist - ‘Why are some of the penguins black and some white?’
‘That’s because the ‘black ones’ are walking away from us’.
 
It was always a weird idea to think some kind of 'astronaut'..alien or human.. was standing there.
I mean what would a human astronaut be doing there right at that moment and is it very likely that any 'space alien' would dress the same way we would in similar astronaut gear..?
 
Possibly because colour correction has only relatively recently become available?

Digital correction/alteration of photographs is relatively-recent: traditional 'wet' lab handling (or mishandling) of photonegative film stock could've helped show-up this prosaic mumsplanation decades ago.

It's a long time since I was taught (as a propa student) classic photography C41 film processing, and (whilst that could not easily-reproduce the instant feedback variety & range of colour options that digital photoediting provides to everyone) it's intriguing that this rigour was never applied within the era of the picture's origin.

Particularly since I seem to remember that a key plank in the professed veracity of this image is that Kodak themselves spoke to it's evident unamendedness*.

(ps there will be a better word than 'unamendedness', but I'm damned if I can think right now what it would be)
 
It's intriguing but something that bugs me about it - if it were a spacesuit then the black visor is on the front and that means the arm bends the wrong way. I've seen pictures of the mother and she was wearing a light colored dress with black hair on a windy day so that indicates to me that there is a possibility that she was just walking away in the background.

That said, I'd assume she would have recognized it was her when she saw it so, that seems like something of a stretch to just say that was it. It's not entirely impossible but it seems like a difficult set of stuff to happen for the picture to look like that.

So... this is all a long way around to say "Yeah, it's weird and I don't have an obvious answer either."
 
Yep - the anomalous bend in the arm was one of the features folks cited in promoting the idea the figure was anomalous. It's not so strange if you simply think of it as seeing a person from behind.
 
The thing is, if it is his wife from behind the number of things that all had to happen at just the right time is a hard to swallow list - the wind had to whip her hair just right, she had to be in the right spot, she had to be moving fast enough so that only the one photo captured her but slow enough not much motion blur is present and she had to have forgotten completely about it by the time the photo was processed.

That said... that is still a shorter list than intelligent life popping up on another planet, developing interstellar space travel, making spacesuits that look a lot like ours, finding us and showing up in the exact right spot for only one picture.

So... Truth be told there is no explanation that doesn't require me to gulp down a LOT of coincidental things.
 
Over the years I go back and study this photo and come to no conclusion.

Maybe that is why I always look at it.

According to the internet comments this is the wife in the background.

I just do not know ?
 
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