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Interesting Photo I've Found

JamesWhitehead said:
I can distinctly make out a dodgy geezer in a baseball-cap taking a good gulp from his mug. :clap:

I'm struck by the fact that without the UFO, the picture seems to lack a clear subject. Dusk in mid-winter by a frosty lake? Maybe it looked more promising at the time the shutter was clicked. I don't think your average flash-unit would do much to illuminate such a scene. The object is the main source of light in the picture, so I would expect it to be reflected by the objects in the vicinity. If you obscure the object itself, can you see any sign of its effect on the landscape? It does seem very flat.

I did notice a certain similarity between the picture on the book-cover and your extra. I wonder if it was an attempt to emulate the style for some planned contribution to the genre?

I looked up the lake when you first mentioned the photo. It is as famous for its birds as for its fish but the symmetry is a bit fearful for it to be a boid or a flying ray! :confused:

Edit: Doesn't the date read 1996 not 1997?

Here is the weather forecast for Friday, 27th December, 1996. It seems to fit with snow in the SE singled-out for comment. :)
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It definitely says 1996.

96.png
 
Yep, it does .. sorry, I was getting the 7 in the date mixed up with the year .. I was asked if I wanted to pose for a picture in the paper today but I had visions of being asked to scratch my chin while staring at the sky with a bemused expression and then probably being described as "a local UFO enthusiast" so I politely declined. Mr Jermy doesn't seem very interested or knowledgeable about passing the pic over to photo specialists (which is fair enough) so as soon as I can get a good scan of it online then I will do .. so everyone can rip it to pieces .. so to speak ..
 
Swifty said:
Yep, it does .. sorry, I was getting the 7 in the date mixed up with the year .. I was asked if I wanted to pose for a picture in the paper today but I had visions of being asked to scratch my chin while staring at the sky with a bemused expression and then probably being described as "a local UFO enthusiast" so I politely declined. Mr Jermy doesn't seem very interested or knowledgeable about passing the pic over to photo specialists (which is fair enough) so as soon as I can get a good scan of it online then I will do .. so everyone can rip it to pieces .. so to speak ..
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It's the Men In Black at it again :)
 
kamalktk said:
Better that than "local UFO nutter". ;)
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Which could possibly be the angle that it would be written up as but without directly using the words "UFO nutter" lol .. I'm more interested in finding the person who took or created the pic and am grateful for help from anyone ..
 
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Mr Jermy (the journalist) is meant to be phoning me at 4pm for an interview, I'm going to pop back into his office first with a view to him emailing me a scan of the pic if anyone would like to put it through photoshop (or any other programmes) to have a closer look ? .. I haven't got photoshop and our scanner's a bit dicey when it comes to hooking it up to my laptop.
 
drbates said:
That light has structure to it. I think the picture may have been taken from within the house and the light is a reflection of a lamp within the room.

http://imgur.com/a/ocfgs
ocfgs

ocfgs


The inset image shows a stretch of water in the grassed area in front of the house - this is not visible in the main picture (maybe it only turns up in wet conditions?) but you can see the trench it occupies. I think this is the dark area in front of the trees in Swiftys pic as it looks too narrow to be the lake proper. I cant get the trees to like up right though.


I can't see any interior pictures that show an appropriately shaped light though. I suppose it might have been a reflection from a Christmas decoration though.
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Watching the vid (and hopefully later people can look at the scan), I think it's relevant that the picture has been cropped crudely because there's no white border on the left hand side or the bottom of the print (using either a sharp knife or a scalpel because there's a double nick on the right hand side of the pic), the cropping suggests to me that the object might have been enlarged or as Rynner has pointed out, it could also be a photo of a photo .. the background is a bit 'muddy' .. perhaps the picture was cropped to remove window frames as you've suggested. It would be interesting to know if there are any chandeliers in the hall. You might have cracked the case ! ..

edit: The Mrs says there's no houses near the lake but the hall does overlook it so we'd be talking about a zoom lens .. she's been there a few times.
 
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davidplankton said:
What if it is a photo of a photo and the first photo was already in a frame, behind glass? Then the reflection ( if that's what it is ) doesn't have to be of something inside the house.
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But who would take a framed photo outside to rephotograph it, and why?
 
Some more analysis of the picture itself.

Taken as a screen-grab from the YouTube video, partially-zoomed, then just converted to a photonegative image. It reveals some interesting features (which could just be processing artefacts, so, no excitement is justified)
2016-08-18 21.58.12.png


Once the glare of the image is reduced (well, inverted in levels of brightness) there's perhaps a suggestion of solidity/shaping on the object, around the right-hand side, as viewed. That doesn't substantively make it a non-reflection in itself, if you follow me, but it's an intriguing effect.

Also, the two outboard dark point-spots are more clearly obvious (located at the 2 o'clock/8 o'clock positions). If the main 'blob of interest' is a reflection, I wonder if they could be scattered re-reflections? But....I'm very-intrigued by the light-grey spot in the middle of the 'blob'...if it's a different level of brightness, that somehow suggests it might not be a conventional splash-back reflection of light at all...and that it could be an object.

Unless this just all video/photographically-generated accidental artefactory. If only we had the original picture....oh: we do!!
 
drbates said:
... why would you not crop the left hand side properly?
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Perhaps the person wasn't as methodical and objective as we're all being and genuinely didn't think to mention that the photo was taken through a window and that the object might just be a reflection ? .. the person could have got home, developed the picture (or whoever developed it) and innocently thought "Hang on a minute .. I don't remember seeing that when I took the picture !" ..
 
Thanks Coastal although it was more good luck than work (excluding the footwork) ! .. I've just returned from getting the photo back from Mr Jermy, he says he is going to run it in the EDP so maybe also The North Norfolk News ?. Fortunately I work in a shop so I can check each issue until I find it :) .. it is cracking fun, me and the Mrs were calling each other Mulder and Scully at the time :p .. I've given the journalist a Cromer hag stone for fun and told him how to research it.

The next step is to ask the people at Blickling Hall if they ever had (or still have) chandeliers in what looks like at least a ground floor eye level room to test the picture being taken through a window so light reflection theory. If I can't get a scan of it online, I have someone in mind who might be able to do that for me. The truth is out there ! ..
 
^^ Great stuff mate. I'm of the opinion, as you seem to be, that it's 99% most likely to be something prosaic and explainable but a great find nonetheless!

Not too far from Blickling myself, lovely place :)
 
graylien said:
UFOs over Norfolk and Suffolk. Seems to be active, though hard to tell if it's a group or a one man band. Still, might be worth letting them see the photo.
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Thanks graylien, someone local to me has kindly scanned and emailed the pic to me and a board member here has received a forwarded scan of it so I'll be looking forward to that investigation.

edit: there's also a white border alongside the right hand side of the picture if we were looking at it the right way up .. the lines visible in the sky are creases on the print itself. The two small white dots on either side of the object seem to be damage to the surface of the print.

BlicklingHall.jpg


edit: GAHH!! :banghead: .. the scan of the pic is telling me it's a png file and too large to cut and paste here ..
 
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henry said:
what happened to this ?
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:bump: .... I loaned the photograph to Blickling Hall with my details to return it to me about the date of your last post, I should have chased it up to be honest, I've still got the lady's name and contact details so I'm hoping it hasn't gone missing ... she was going to show it to another member of staff who she said was a UFO enthusiast. Fingers crossed I get it back.
 
lets hope so ... strange how even in these days fortean artefacts have a way of migrating to "experts" never to be seen again
 
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LazarusMP said:
Swifty,

If you have the too-large .png file handy you could upload it to imgur.com or somewhere similar then post the link/thumbnail here so we could get a better look.
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I was on the phone to a young lady in the east wing of Blickling Hall today, the woman I loaned it to has since left employment there but the young lady instantly remembered the photo, said "Do you want it back?" (I did say so at the time and had left my details) so she asked for my details again and sounds like the type who'll find it as she say's she's going to try and do. Fingers crossed. If I do get it back, I'll try and do that LazarusMP.
 
I know that some of these diamond shaped UFO's were caused by light reflections that mimic the shape of the diaphragm of the video camera. But I cannot find this on the Internet, too much noise in the Google results.
 
uair01 said:
I know that some of these diamond shaped UFO's were caused by light reflections that mimic the shape of the diaphragm of the video camera. But I cannot find this on the Internet, too much noise in the Google results.
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It appears to be a photograph taken perhaps by a traditional (by today's standards) old school single lens reflex camera .. the date at the top written in faded biro reads 27th Dec, '96, as you can see in the video, it's been crudely chopped by some kind of knife to frame the bright object in the middle (the white borders around the image are only present on the top and the right hand side as you can again see in the video) ... the print that's hard to read on the back of the photograph reads: KODAK ELECTRONIC IMAGING PAPER if that helps anyone date the paper itself? .. I don't know if anyone was printing video sourced images onto this kind of paper in '96 or not but I'm going with this being a darkroom print and wouldn't be at all disappointed if it's a fake .. it's a fun print and I've contacted someone with a view to studying it more deeply ..
 
Swifty said:
It appears to be a photograph taken perhaps by a traditional (by today's standards) old school single lens reflex camera .. the date at the top written in faded biro reads 27th Dec, '96, as you can see in the video, it's been crudely chopped by some kind of knife to frame the bright object in the middle (the white borders around the image are only present on the top and the right hand side as you can again see in the video) ... the print that's hard to read on the back of the photograph reads: KODAK ELECTRONIC IMAGING PAPER if that helps anyone date the paper itself? .. I don't know if anyone was printing video sourced images onto this kind of paper in '96 or not but I'm going with this being a darkroom print and wouldn't be at all disappointed if it's a fake .. it's a fun print and I've contacted someone with a view to studying it more deeply ..
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If I remember KODAK ELECTRONIC IMAGING PAPER was a thermal printing paper which used heat to transfer colours from ribbons to the paper. Probably around in the late 80s early 90s.
 
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