Photographic Oddity

Please take a look at this famous photograph.



Do you notice anything strange?

Take a good look!

Anyone?


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You mean the hand that is holding up his head is curiously a vacant sleeve instead?

I find a few other oddities as well.

One would not expect Bobby's eyes to be so open either.

Considering. Thanks for the posting.

I agree with the second poster,

Missing hand hold up his head,

Facial expression and eyes way to alert!

Wow, that sleeve without a hand is interesting to say the least. I am pondering over whether it is possible that the guy's arm is further up from the bottom of the sleeve's cuff. It just doesn't look like there is enough room there to hide an entire grown man's hand. The only other explanation would be that the photo was doctored in some fashion. OR, of course, that the guy is an alien. Can never forget that possibility right? lol.

it almost looks like his foot is floating slightly above the floor too. weird!

Hunh. Now this has me thinking. With a supposed gunshot at point blank range...should there be a visible exit wound in front? He IS awfully alert.

You don't suppose that after his brother and King's assassination a couple months prior that his death was faked, do you? I never considered the possibility until now.

My only explanation would be its the sleeve of a jacket that the man on the left is about to place under his head as the picture is being taken ?

ok, I'll wear the Dunce cap and ask: "Who dat man?"

Originally posted by 3Dplus
ok, I'll wear the Dunce cap and ask: "Who dat man?"

As most Americans do on the internet, they assume everyone else is American as well.
Like you, I had no idea who this was or what is was a photograph of, but a image search showed it was the assasination of a local politician (Robert Kennedy) known to Americans.

This webpage also has a discussion of the photo oddities.

reply to post by alfa1


Thanks alfa. For a brief second I thought I was in that cave waaaay longer than I first thought. A quick scan of the page will get me on my way, as it is indeed an interesting pic.

The "missing wrist" is interesting, but explainable if the sleeve of his sport coat is loose enough. What really struck me weird is how tight the collar of Robert F. Kennedy's collar looks. Is that tight enough to cut off his air? Could they be (OMG) finishing him off after all those bullets failed to?

Something not right there. Is there video for this angle? Or is there only a photograph?

Another photo from the opposite side, apparently at the same time (close to it).
The "famous" image was what was printed on the front page of newspapers. Probably some editing for gore.

Originally posted by 3Dplus
ok, I'll wear the Dunce cap and ask: "Who dat man?"

Who dat man, is right!

It is supposed to represent robert kennedy, brother of john f kennedy, mere
moments after what turned out to be a fatal (point blank) gunshot to the back
of the head, behind the ear.

But the question is, as others have pointed out, where the heck is the
hand that otherwise (invisibly) appears to be supporting the injured kennedys
head?
More on the RFK assassination photograph issues Here.


Has all the other conspiratorial palava beeen introduced deliberately to this (and other)
narrative(s) to muddy the waters, and lead investigators away from the whole
idea that these events were in fact faked/hoaxed, and that the main players are nothing
but willing actors in a greater game. The kennedys were elites.

The RFK assassination has all the hallmarks (to a lesser degree) of the JFK assassination.
Conspiracy abounding from all sides and in all directions. (9/11 anyone?)

I been through all of this thread. It cannot be not true, imo.
The "JFK-MURDER" was a STAGED EVENT / JFK wasn't "KILLED" on 11/22/63!

Doesn't it all make sense!
It is a big club. Fakery for co-operation.
No other way.

A closer examination of the picture shows that the man's hand holding up RFK's head isn't missing, it is obscured. However, there should be a pool of blood under the head, I think, from where the wound was bleeding out from the back of the skull.

See a bigger version of this pic, and the testimony of the photographer: framework.latimes.com...

Maybe it took a while for the pool of blood to form. A later pic:



I don't think it was so much a photographic oddity as a trick of the eyes.

The real oddity is how the LAPD covered up this assassination, much like the Dallas PD helped do 5 years earlier with JFK.

Does anyone know when there is recorded evidence of the missing hand being noticed? I ask because I would need to see evidence that it was pre photoshop before I accept anything. Anyone could have removed that hand from the photo any time in the last 10 years otherwise.

Also, I have to ask what the point would be in removing that hand.

It wouldn't have been for "gore" as some have said, because the tech needed to do that would not have been publicly available. They would have blacked it out, not removed it and replaced it with imagery of the concrete floor. To even attempt to do that would have taken at least days back then.

reply to post by detachedindividual


Perhaps it was to signify 'the hidden hand' as being involved in this staged affair.

Several posters, including myself note that most, if not all the (alleged) assassination photos,
appear to make not only RFK, but others head and appendages, suspended in mid-air.
This may be an early attempt at image 'fixing' or layering before publication.

They also appear to be staged in that there is not the progression or spreading of blood onto his shirt from his alleged three wounds. The odd handling of his head by others present.

Et cetera.

LOOK AT THE HAIR IN THE FIRST PHOTO POSTED.
NOW LOOK AT THE HAIR IN THE SECOND PHOTO POSTED.
LOOK AT THE HAIR IN THE THIRD PHOTO POSTED.

Originally posted by Phage
Another photo from the opposite side, apparently at the same time (close to it).
The "famous" image was what was printed on the front page of newspapers. Probably some editing for gore.

edit on 10/12/2012 by Phage because: (no reason given)

This is such a strange one. The fellow with his hand on the back of RFK's head has no blood on it, as you would expect.

But, what is going on with RFK's legs in this one? Is one leg elevated with the guy trying to force him back down?
What about the other leg? So when is the "busboy" pic in this timeframe?
I saw that posted on the link upstream.
Too bad they aren't date time stamped to know the sequence.

As a photographer, and a journalist, I would love to know more about what kind of film was used here. It looks to be a higher than usual ISO, at least 800, but it could be push processed too. Whatever it was, it was shot with a very high shutter speed, hence the "floating foot" in the first one. It's shot in a fraction of a second, a very minute fraction at that. Usually the standard for a hand-held camera is that it must be shot at 1/60th of a second for the shutter speed for it not to be blurry overall. The faster the shutter though, the less motion blur there is.

Back in university, when I was shooting sports, it wasn't uncommon to shoot at 1/1000th of a second or even faster. That is probably what we're seeing here, maybe not quite that fast, but still it's quick. Now for a photo to be shot this fast with film, as this was, it has to be a higher ISO speed to compensate too. The higher the ISO the more grain in the shot, as we see here too, which can lead to some odd detail loss in interesting ways.

It also has to be noted that these shots were done long before digital photo editing of any kind. Photoshop was decades away, as were any computers powerful enough to do photo-manipulation. Airbrushing photos was a work of art back at this point, as were the other major photographic editing "tools" such as burning and dodging which involve over and under exposing various parts of the photograph while making prints. It cannot be stressed enough how incredibly skilled a photo editor had to be back then.

Therefore, it's quite normal to see much more glaring errors in photo-manipulation from this and earlier eras. From a photographer's standpoint I see nothing that is abnormal for the time, save the fact that the photographer just happened to have the absolute perfect film, which again is probably a less-used higher ISO speed compared to what was generally used in political photojournalism at the time.

I cannot speak to the realities of gunshot wounds and the lucidity of RFK in the moment, as I am no expert in that at all, except to say that I have, in my experience as a journalist in battlefields, seen people completely aware and in a panic, such as it appears RFK is here, after being shot and sustaining horrible wounds. Shock is a terrifying state of mind to anyone who has been in it, and there are many different effects it has on people.

So to sum it up, the weird thing I see here is that the photographs are of the quality they are, it sticks out to me a bit that it was so well done. However, I am not completely familiar with the circumstances of where RFK was to be that evening, his schedule would of course have been given in advance to reporters, so I cannot say for absolute certain that the film shouldn't have been there either.

The original photo looks most likely airbrushed. If you close enough at The OP's original image, it's almost discernible to see the outline of a hand. I am guessing that at this angle, there was blood on his hand possibly, not seen in the opposite angled shot posted above. The foot of the man helping RFK looks odd and the area around it doesn't look right at all, making me think that he was possibly standing partially in his blood or was close to it at least, with them airbrushing the area very close to his foot and obscuring the image.