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Something Captured In A Photo

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river85

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Feb 25, 2010
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9
Hi everyone,

This evening my brother got a whatsapp from his friend. It was a photo of my brother and his friend hugging in the woods. This friend took the photo and is scared of anything remotely creepy. Only it looks they aren't alone in the photo. On the left side of the photo there is another figure. To me it looks like a translucent man wearing some sort of creepy mask with a big mouth and he's looking towards the camera, whilst his body is turned towards my brother and his friend.

It also looks like the figure is holding something in his hands.

I am sure this photo must be faked but I am no good at telling these sorts of things, so I wanted to post it here and see what you guys think.

The woods where the photo was taken is in Lower Kingswood, Surrey, England.

Again it's probably most definitely faked but it's fun to think...'but what if it's not?':D

My brother swears nobody altered it. My friend who I just emailed it to was unimpressed, thinking it could be a spot on the lens or an out of focus dust particle. But it just doesn't look like that to me!

freakyphoto.png
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It looks like it could be a lens flare from light (I'm not a professional photographer so please excuse me if my camera terms are totally bunk :roll: ). I can see something resembling a man's shoulders, but very little beyond that. I think this is probably just a good old fashioned case of simulacra - or photoshop, who knows.
 
river85 said:
Hi everyone,

This evening my brother got a whatsapp from his friend.
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a what?

it does rather look like your friend captured a hoax, though. lol.

seriously, most of the details that appear to the human eye to be part of the figure, are actually part of the background. simulacra indeed.
 
I looked at the link you posted, Hexebus, but I can't tell from looking how you know that it's fake.

My thought at first as well was that it must be part of the background but the more I look at it, the more I can't see that anymore >.<

Ooh and whatsapp is an application on androids/iphones where you can send texts for free.

My guess is someone photoshopped and that Hexebus is right, but I can't tell how you can know it's fake from that link you sent.
 
river85 said:
I looked at the link you posted, Hexebus, but I can't tell from looking how you know that it's fake.
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Yes, a little elucidation would help - but a useful tool, if it does what it says on the tin.

However, if I'm reading the image properly, the final sample suggests that any anomaly is centred on the two central figures, which doesn't seem terribly logical when the subject under review is at the edge of the image (and its ironic that the anomaly looks a bit like a skull sans jawbone).

Personally, I don't think there's anything in the image that can't be explained by lens flare and/or simulacra and/or a little bit of photoshop - but I'm not entirely convinced by the error level analysis in this case either. (It states in the FAQ's that ELA is not as effective with low quality images - which might explain why it's not terribly convincing in this case. Hard to tell without more technical data.)

Edit: Incidentally, haven't had time to do anything but scan it yet, but the blog mentioned in the link Hexebus provided looks like it might be really interesting.

Edited for smelling pisstakes
 
It's a ghost meerkat. See how its holding its paws. 8)
 
Spookdaddy said:
river85 said:
I looked at the link you posted, Hexebus, but I can't tell from looking how you know that it's fake.
Click to expand...

Yes, a little elucidation would help - but a useful tool, if it does what it says on the tin.

However, if I'm reading the image properly, the final sample suggests that any anomoly is centred on the two central figures, which doesn't seem terribly logical when the subject under review is at the edge of the image
Click to expand...
That's what I took out of it too. Someone photoshopped people into an image that contains an anomaly? A more likely explanation would be that the camera app on the phone caused that.
 
You can get ghost creating apps for mobile phones which make it really easy to add a ghost to a picture. This pretty much makes every mobile phone picture suspect from the start, sadly.
 
I just asked my friend which sort of phone his friend used to take that picture and it was with an Iphone.

But I have the feeling from having met this friend of his that she didn't manipulate it.[/quote]
 
I don't think it needed manipulation. I think its some sort of reflection/diffraction effect coupled with the tree branches forming patterns to our minds. If you look, there is another misty area about one third across the picture and 'further back'. That would be characteristic of a diffraction effect. Phone cameras are especially prone to that sort of thing because the lens is simple and unshielded.

And I don't really think its a meerkat :)
 
Maybe it helps with finding the image that is the 'ghost' but it looks to me like someone in a high hazard suit with a mask and gloves on, writing on a pad. Someone you'd expect at a scene of bird flu or mad cow disease. I used to wear them a lot in the chem lab but this is someone outside making notes, you can even see the gloves. Don't now what it all means though.
 
Dingo667 said:
Maybe it helps with finding the image that is the 'ghost' but it looks to me like someone in a high hazard suit with a mask and gloves on, writing on a pad. Someone you'd expect at a scene of bird flu or mad cow disease. I used to wear them a lot in the chem lab but this is someone outside making notes, you can even see the gloves. Don't now what it all means though.
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It does look like someone in a suit, you're right.
Alien anthropologist watching human mating rituals? :)
 
Mythopoeika said:
Dingo667 said:
Maybe it helps with finding the image that is the 'ghost' but it looks to me like someone in a high hazard suit with a mask and gloves on, writing on a pad. Someone you'd expect at a scene of bird flu or mad cow disease. I used to wear them a lot in the chem lab but this is someone outside making notes, you can even see the gloves. Don't now what it all means though.
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It does look like someone in a suit, you're right.
Alien anthropologist watching human mating rituals? :)
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Going by the way it is holding itself, it doesn't seem too impressed... ;)
 
No matter how hard I look at this, it only looks like there was a smear of oil or something on the lens when they took the picture... and the light hit it and made it show up more than usual.
It happens a lot with tiny cell phone cameras.

I can't see a "figure" at all, just a lighter smear.
 
tamyu said:
No matter how hard I look at this, it only looks like there was a smear of oil or something on the lens when they took the picture... and the light hit it and made it show up more than usual.
It happens a lot with tiny cell phone cameras.

I can't see a "figure" at all, just a lighter smear.
Click to expand...

Hmmm yes, I think you're right. If you look you can see most of the apparent 'body' is really the background showing through the mistiness and just happening to suggest hands, arms etc.
 
That was my impressions too. A haz suit, face mask and yellow gloves looking at some sort of instrument in their hands.
 
Dingo667 said:
Maybe it helps with finding the image that is the 'ghost' but it looks to me like someone in a high hazard suit with a mask and gloves on, writing on a pad. Someone you'd expect at a scene of bird flu or mad cow disease. I used to wear them a lot in the chem lab but this is someone outside making notes, you can even see the gloves. Don't now what it all means though.
Click to expand...

To me, this shows how simulacra work. I see an elderly man (with male pattern baldness) writing on a pad, but in some sort of robe, perhaps an ecclesial or academic vestment. And whaddya know, I'm a PhD student in theology who works in a church!

I agree that it's probably a bit of light that, set against the tree patterns behind it, forms what our brains interpret as a human figure. But just what sort of human figure, our individual brains will fill in based on our own experiences and habits of seeing.

Unless someone faked it, but then I'd expect we'd all see more of the same thing.
 
Yep, definitely Ghost Capture, I'm having a bit of fun with it and UFO Capture at the moment. I've used that same figure myself.
 
This does open up an interesting point. With film photography, for over a century we've got used to regarding a photo as a record of an actual event. Such manipulation as can be done with actual film is usually pretty easy to detect.

Digital photography is (relatively speaking) in its infancy, but already its hard to trust any digital photo, and the apps for manipulating them can only get more sophisticated. My camera , depending on what mode it is in, does all sorts of things to colour balance, to compensate for the lens in use, etc. etc. before it even saves the pcture. Will we be able to trust digital picures of anything in the future?

I don't think this particular picture is manipulated, I think its a diffraction effect on a cheap lens, but how could we know it hasn't been for sure? And apply that to any digi picture - that shows anything controversial - who is going to be able to prove it hasn't been Photoshopped (or whatever)?
 
If we all had enough memory to save photo in RAW format. That will be the only way to ensure that a photo has not been manipulated in the future. (If you are alarmed at relatively few spelling mistakes I invested in a full size keyboard. :D ).
 
You can edit RAW photos. You couldn't, at first, but now you can. The tools are getting more comprehensive almost by the day.
 
I don't think that is the same image, but hey, I could be wrong. I don't think we need to allege tinkering to conclude that what is in the original image is probably not a ghost.
 
And now for something completely different!

So why are you posting here, I hear you cry!

Because the thread title covers what I want to discuss. We have loads of threads of alleged ghost or UFO photos (and even photos of things that are not UFOs!), but sometimes a photographic anomaly will turn up which seems to defy simple classification.

And I've come across one today in a photo I took in 1968!
This is a pic of Porthleven in Cornwall

Porthleven68_zps04dc341a.jpg


There are two points of interest:
Firstly, there are people on the stone pier, although nowadays public access is banned because of the danger from waves in rough weather.

But the anomaly is the white squiggle at the bottom of the image:

Enigma_zpsbd802223.jpg


What the heck is that? If it's below the level of the pier, it would be in shadow (the pic was taken towards sunset) so it would have to be glowing pretty brightly to show up at all!
(The original photo was a colour slide, scanned into my computer in 2005.)

But if it's something up on the pier, it's still pretty odd - what is it?

Not only did I not notice anything in 1968, I don't recall noticing this anomaly in the photo at any time, even when I scanned it into the computer, when I naturally check carefully for defects!

My best guess so far is that is some kind of fishing lure, hanging from the handrail (but it seems too large for that).

Or possibly it's some fish or eel hoisted energetically from the sea which ended up hanging briefly in that position...

So, time for a brain-storm - any more ideas?
 
is the upper half of the object conveniently hidden within the vertical portion of one of the regularly repeated shadows we see along the floor of the jetée ?
 
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