Help Analyze a Photograpic Anomaly

reply to post by Section31

Originally posted by Section31

Originally posted by OrganicAnagram33
reply to post by AmericanProdigy

 

Originally posted by AmericanProdigy
By the way, was it not a clue to you that the other "account" on here purported to be the friend did not "friend" him in his profile. Small accident he made when he set up the account he forgot to friend himself from the "MissThinks" account.

Sorry brohan, but you couldn't be more wrong. missthinks is another person, and she is how I got the photos.

Miguel Meruje did NOT take this photo, it was taken by missthinks' mother's co-worker and friend when they were on a school trip to Quebec. If you were around earlier, you would have seen that we were both online at the same time.

There you go folks. It was a friend's mother's friend who took this photo. Since he couldn't deceive the Photoshop experts, he opened a secondary account in order to prevent getting caught.

One of the moderators should be able to see if there are similar IP addresses.

Section31, if you took the time to read THE OPENING POST of my thread, you would know that's who took the picture from the start.

I did NOT open a second account, missthinks is the person who gave me the photos.

PLEASE MODS, check our IP addresses and put this argument to rest. I want people like Section31 to know we are two different people, separated by half of Canada.

Originally posted by AmericanProdigy
We can forever put this thread to rest.

I know this guy, his name is Miguel Meruje. He is an avid Photographer and art lover, who is experienced with Photoshop etc.

The photo is of him and his girlfriend in front of the Addam's house while on a trip to Quebec. They are standing on the gravel, and you can see the angle of the camera is above the fence vs below the fence. He didn't use photoshop for this hoax, but rather Gimp. The original photo is on Flickr.

Sorry folks, not the first time he's done this. He has a passion for old buildings and architecture...and hoaxes.

By the way, was it not a clue to you that the other "account" on here purported to be the friend did not "friend" him in his profile. Small accident he made when he set up the account he forgot to friend himself from the "MissThinks" account.

A simple google search does seem to lend credibility to your post.

Much appreciated.

reply to post by mrsoul2009


Dear mrsoul2009, I realize this. That's why I provided THE ORIGINAL PHOTOS, so you people could look at the code.

I have also just suggested that mods look at the IP addresses of myself and missthinks to prove we are different people.

I am proving everything that is in my power to do so.

I was looking for a sincere analysis, and many people have provided what they believe, and some have even gone the extra mile and used their professional knowledge to dissect this image.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time and effort to do so, it has been appreciated.

Originally posted by AmericanProdigy
We can forever put this thread to rest.

I know this guy, his name is Miguel Meruje. He is an avid Photographer and art lover, who is experienced with Photoshop etc.

The photo is of him and his girlfriend in front of the Addam's house while on a trip to Quebec. They are standing on the gravel, and you can see the angle of the camera is above the fence vs below the fence. He didn't use photoshop for this hoax, but rather Gimp. The original photo is on Flickr.

Sorry folks, not the first time he's done this. He has a passion for old buildings and architecture...and hoaxes.

By the way, was it not a clue to you that the other "account" on here purported to be the friend did not "friend" him in his profile. Small accident he made when he set up the account he forgot to friend himself from the "MissThinks" account.

Err, I don't even know how to reply to this. There was no one in front of the house when the photo was taken- the tour bus was full of grade 8 students and a couple teachers, and I'm pretty sure this "Meguel" fellow was not one of them. I'm kind of amused that you would make up such an elaborate lie to try and falsify the shot though! I mean, why?

Oh, and look at that, we're both on and posting at the same time Section31.

Originally posted by OrganicAnagram33
Oh, and look at that, we're both on and posting at the same time Section31.

Two completely different browsers. Its a rather simple concept. Or, you could be using two different devices.

If you both have different IP addresses and locations, I will have no problem with apologizing. However, the ball is no longer in our courts. Its up to the moderators.

reply to post by OrganicAnagram33

I'm he'll just come back with something along the lines of "you have two computers and are posting at the same time on purpose in order to make it seem like you are, in fact, two people." This is getting silly.
I also would like to thank those who aren't being sucked in by the people who are desperately trying to prove this is a doctored image. Every one of my post as well as the OP's posts have been genuine and honest. Neither of us ever claimed there was something "paranormal" in this shot-- we're not in it for attention (if you don't mind me speaking for you, OP). I'm just as curious as he is about the shot, hence why I've continued to check the replies on this thread. I have, however, been disappointed with how people have been receiving it, as I feel we've taken some steps back in finding out why the shot turned out the way it did (though, the fact that the flash was on and it was on night mode is an embarrassing piece of evidence further suggesting the true technological handicap of my mom's friend, and -though I know little about cameras- could have something to do with the object that appeared in the shot). Having said that, I've never been able to dissect the image as much as some of those on this thread have in the past couple days. It's enlightening!

OK. So I got my mother, who was on the bus with her friend/co-worker, to say a little something about what happened in detail:

"Every year we like to take the grade 8 students to see this house because it's such an interesting house. The streets are very narrow and it's hard for the bus to navigate through the streets and stop while having other traffic pass by- so the bus driver agreed only to stop for a short time. Students were taking pictures from the windows of the bus, but [the co-worker] stepped outside the bus door and snapped a shot with her digital camera. She came back in the bus and looked at the picture, and it wasn't centered, so she went back out and took another shot. When she had a look at that shot, she said "Oh my god, I can't believe this. Look at this picture", and started showing everyone on the bus. She compared the two shots and was incredulous that one had nothing and the other had this object in it. They were literally taken seconds apart. I then took a picture and looked at my picture and got nothing. The next year we went back and everyone took pictures- no one saw anything. We've gone back twice since and have yet to get another shot with anything remotely like this. Every year we show the picture to the students and all take pictures, but are not sure that we'll get anything like this again. We also heard that this house has been abandoned, and that two brothers lived there and there was some sort of quarrel between them over the house."

Whew. That was a bitch to type up as she spoke.

Edit: My mother also mentioned that the "night mode" and "flash" may have been on because it was a new camera, and [the coworker] was just learning how to use it. She just snapped the picture oblivious to what settings it was on.


Edit2: Removed the name of the co-worker for security reasons.

Originally posted by missthinks

Originally posted by AmericanProdigy
We can forever put this thread to rest.

I know this guy, his name is Miguel Meruje. He is an avid Photographer and art lover, who is experienced with Photoshop etc.

The photo is of him and his girlfriend in front of the Addam's house while on a trip to Quebec. They are standing on the gravel, and you can see the angle of the camera is above the fence vs below the fence. He didn't use photoshop for this hoax, but rather Gimp. The original photo is on Flickr.

Sorry folks, not the first time he's done this. He has a passion for old buildings and architecture...and hoaxes.

By the way, was it not a clue to you that the other "account" on here purported to be the friend did not "friend" him in his profile. Small accident he made when he set up the account he forgot to friend himself from the "MissThinks" account.

Err, I don't even know how to reply to this. There was no one in front of the house when the photo was taken- the tour bus was full of grade 8 students and a couple teachers, and I'm pretty sure this "Meguel" fellow was not one of them. I'm kind of amused that you would make up such an elaborate lie to try and falsify the shot though! I mean, why?

With complete respect and an open mind, I would suggest you, personally( assuming you are being honest), investigate the Flickr account associated with Miguel Meruje/organicanagram as per Americanprodigy's post.

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reply to post by Clark Savage Jr.

Done! This Or This? Does anyone have more information on who this Megel guy is? I seem to be searching the wrong thing, perhaps. I assure you he has nothing to do with this photograph, once again, though.

reply to post by Clark Savage Jr.

investigate the Flickr account associated with Miguel Meruje/organicanagram

hi, i'm on that flickr account... where should i be looking? can't find that photo. More info and less cryptic clues please.

reply to post by Prevaricator87

First time poster! This thread generated enough interest for me to sign up to ATS just to post my thoughts! I've read all the posts and some people clearly think the photo has been 'manipulated' but from my experience looking closely at the photos in the link, I'm certain these haven't been tampered with. Its easier to show you guys so I did a little experiment in photoshop cs4 to try to 'fake' the anomaly in the photo. I can think of 2 methods in PS how this could have been done, these are:
1 - Eraser tool Few people have already mentioned this as possible method in this thread but here is my take on it From a distance it looks convincing but at closer inspection around the edges of the figure you see lack of colour fringing (aka chromatic aberrations). Colour fringing occurs when the lens fails to focus all colors to the same convergence point. With this eraser method it is difficult to fake chromatic aberrations but there is another method where faking it becomes easier.
2 - New layer This is essentially creating blank layer over the photo and simply using the brush to draw in a figure. Using different brushes with varying opacity & flow, you can also create convincing figure similar to the original But there is more, with this method I could layer more layer on top (or below) each other which allows me in this case to create a layer dedicated to 'faking' the chromatic aberrations. here is the result Very similar no?
But here is where it gets interesting, after exporting the shopped photo I re-imported back in to PS and analysed it for a bit and found something interesting. I used the Curves tool which is normally used to adjust contrast to photos, and I dialed in pretty extreme settings which left only the extreme white end of the spectrum. Here is the tip of both the figures blown up Its pretty clear from this image that what ever is on that original photo was not edited in using brushes. The edited in figure shows varying degree of edge softness probably caused by the varying levels of the brush opacity.
The original shows no such variation in levels and the chromatic aberrations look genuine. Personally I think whatever is on that photo was not edited in using any photo edit software but was captured on that day.

Hi, thought i'd repost the above post, IMO the best one so far on the subject. I can't believe how naive and dumb some of the so called PS experts are on this thread. Prevaricator87 has clearly demonstrated the photo anomoliy is NOT easy to recreate using eraser tools or layer tools.
I do digital vfx compositin for a living, working mainly in After Effects. From my experience I could see immediatly that the anomoly had some interesting details... the non-uniform blurring, the colour bleed.

A couple of suggestions mentioned here sound likely... insect in front of lens or perhaps glare from a window... I know the OP says they weren't in a car, but memories fade. Not sure if the OP or his mate were actually there when photo was taken ... or were you?

But now I'm intrigued by this Miguel Meruje fellow... I've looked through all his flickr photos and can't see this... so perhaps this is a red herring/ bad joke?

Great original post anyway.

reply to post by OrganicAnagram33


In my opinion as a motion picture Key Grip, it is a reflection in the window of the bus. If you look at the right side of the anamoly, it has a hard edge as if something were blocking part of the light source. This is one of the grip departments main duties on set, killing stray light sources. We employ tons of different types of flags and other unique pieces of equipment to avoid this exact thing.

reply to post by manmental


I have no affiliation with that Miguel Meruje, the fact that Organic Anagram is a company and my name is just a coincidence.

Anyone with common sense can see that photo is a fake. The cloud's aren't even in the same position. What do you take us for?

Originally posted by soaringhawk
Anyone with common sense can see that photo is a fake. The cloud's aren't even in the same position. What do you take us for?

edit on 22-5-2011 by soaringhawk because: (no reason given)

It's been said over and over again that they are two separate pictures taken seconds apart, duh. Read the whole thread, I spent a few hours on it and it was pretty entertaining and worth it.

As for this specific photo like I and others have said it's probably a light reflection, an object in front of the lens or glare, etc. But this whole overly long drawn out debate got me thinking of whether or not ANY "ghost" images could possibly be legitimate.
Say hypothetically we assume ghosts do exist, could we really assume that a camera is capable of capturing one?
In order for a "ghost" to appear on an image it would have to appear on the electromagnetic spectrum, and more specifically on the visible light spectrum which is a narrow width of the whole electromagnetic spectrum.
Today's digital cameras, even the best are still incapable of capturing the full dynamic range of what the human eye can see without the merging of multiple photos, I'd be very hesitant to say that an image sensor could detect an entity invisible to the human eye.
A camera would have to be designed specifically to be able to capture the full electromagnetic spectrum, or ghosts would have to be visible to us also.
I'd be interested to see what people think of this. I don't know all there is to know about the image sensor but if there are other photographers out there who could help me out let me know your thoughts.
(I know there are modified/ specially designed cameras that exist that can capture infra- red or UV light).

Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander
reply to post by loves a conspiricy

 

The clouds actually ARE NOT the same in both pictures. As others have already pointed out.

These clouds are exactly the same. Only one photo shows slightly more detail in the clouds due to brightness/contrast adjustments.

Look closely, it's the exact same photo, cropped, darkened, perhaps slightly rotated.

0% doubt that this is real.

Khar

Guys,
EXIF data is irrelevant. It can be added or removed extremely easily, like editing a MS Word document.
The anomalous image has consistent error levels, meaning it is unlike that one part of the image is more edited than another. That means it's probably not edited at all.

The forensic error level analysis website doesn't take higher-resolution images, so here is a link to some downloadable software which will do ELA on hi-rez images: www.socosoftware.com...

I use this tool for things like this image, where we have a huge original that cannot be analyzed online. Neither the 'obvious' anomaly nor the smaller white anomaly stand out as having different error levels. I'm not going to post screenshots of the program, you can see it for yourself. You can change the known error rate for when the resave occurs, as well as a couple other variables. This is useful for testing for consistent across the 'spectrum' so to speak of error levels and compression.

Yeah, it looks, to somebody who has used photoshop, like a photoshop brush or dodge/burn effect. But that would leave a more significant trace in the error level analysis. One thing besides whether the image was faked or not we can learn from ELA is that the anomalous area is pretty much totally white, this means the camera receptor unit was saturated over part of the image. If this anomalous area had a different ELA result, then the fact that it was so bright and white would be additional support for the edited theory. However, the ELA result indicates that the bright white anomaly was already there when the photo was taken, and that a 'real-world' source of the anomaly is more likely.

So, in my opinion, image editing is not the source of the anomaly. So we can discard that one potential source of the anomaly (image editing) and instead consider the millions of potential 'real-world' sources of the anomaly (something reflective flew by or floated by and reflected a lot of light, ball lightning, general camera malfunction, taken from behind glass, and on and on).

The characteristics of the anomaly tell me this is something quite mundane, photographed in strange lighting conditions. Or maybe it is a real ghost - since we don't have conclusive evidence (according to the professionals, lol) of ghosts, how are any of us to say what a REAL ghost photo looks like? Maybe it looks exactly like this image. Maybe it looks like if you took a pot of spaghetti sauce and dumped it over your head and shouted "I'm the Queen of France!"