Backyard Photos, invitation for Jack White.

[Sandy Larsen]

5 hours ago, Chris Bristow said:

On 2/15/2017 at 1:01 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

Mike,

You don't need to be an expert to see that the BYPs are fake.

Here's my simple proof that the photos are fake:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/23028-how-did-they-get-roscoe-white-to-lean-like-that-and-not-fall-over/&page=19#comment-335258

 

(P.S. I know... I use the word "proof" a little loosely.)

Sandy, I was looking over the shadows of the rifle and newspaper and noticed something. While the newspaper looks to be pointing straight up, the rifle is leaning towards the camera and slightly to the right. To the degree it is leaning at the camera the shadow will move toward a horizontal position. Holding a pen upright on a table under a close light source and rocking it from straight up to 30 degrees forward changed the direction of the shadow by almost 90 degrees. Just how far forward the rifle leans is hard to confirm but it may be a plausible answer for the direction of the shadow.

Chris,

I tested what you are talking about back when I came up with my "proof." I've just done the same test several more times. Each time I've determined that the tip of the rifle has to be angled about 45 degrees down toward the camera in order to see the shadow that we do in the photo. (You say 30 degrees.)

I don't believe that rifle is angled down toward the camera anywhere near that far.

I also set up a "post" to replicate the one to Oswald's right and a little behind him. I found that the tip of my "rifle" doesn't cast a shadow back there when tilted down 45 degrees. The rifle in the picture does cast a shadow on the post.

Anyway, I can see that it would improve my proof if I were to determine the angle at which the rifle is tilted toward the camera. That may be possible to do because tilting the rifle toward the camera makes the rifle appear shorter. At 45 degrees, the apparent length of the rifle will be 70.7% its real length. (Cosine of 45 degrees.)

So unless someone knows of a simple way to estimate the angle the rifle is tilted toward the camera, my simple proof isn't so simple after all.

[John Butler]

Kudos to folks like Sandy Larsen who say you do not need to be a photo expert or as others have said a photogrammetrist to be able to see what a photo contains.  That is what torpedoed Jack White and Robert Groden at their HSCA testimony.  The HSCA authenticated the BYP just as the WC did.  Both lied through their teeth!

To say anything other than the steps shadows are toward the left and the Oswald figure's shadow is toward the right denies reality.  The shadows are inconsistent not consistent.

I have been reading through older posts on this web site.  I seeing more examples than I want of people abandoning factual knowledge, logic, and reason in favor of pseudo-scientific measurements that with the right data set gives you the answer you are looking for.  A good example of this is trying to show firing angles from the 6th floor sniper's nest to various points along Elm Street according to the Zapruder film.  Why do that when you cannot prove legally, beyond a reasonable doubt, that anyone fired a rifle from the 6th floor sniper's nest?  Can you prove that the Zapruder film is 100% authentic?  If it is not should it be used?

What standard of proof should be used in judging whether something is true or false?  I try to use legal standards when possible.  I often fail due to lack of knowledge of the law.  The thing I said about Roscoe White being the author of the backyard photos is in my opinion a 51% or greater (more than likely) possibility.

I would like to hear your idea of how to judge whether something is true or false?

 

 

 

[Tom Hume]

Hi John,

 

Apparently responding to a previous post of mine, you wrote: “To say anything other than the steps shadows are toward the left and the Oswald figure's shadow is toward the right denies reality.  The shadows are inconsistent not consistent....I would like to hear your idea of how to judge whether something is true or false?”

 

Without any science to back me up, my seat-of-the-pants opinion is that the Oswald figure’s body shadow and the stair shadows appear consistent. But if you are proven to be correct, I will be the first to give you a round of applause. You will have noticed something that goes along way toward also proving the BYP to be bogus.

 

Right or wrong, your shadow hypothesis appears testable, but you will need offer something like a 3-D model to prove it to the rest of us. I wish you luck.

 

Tom

 

[John Butler]

Sorry Tom,

All to often I say things that get me in trouble when I should have been more tactful.  Happened all the time when I taught school.  I should have grew up and matured. 

I don't really get your point about 3-d models.  Shadows move off from a light source based on where the light source is.  How a 3-d model of 2-d photo would clarify that I don't know.  What I see is 3 different shadow patterns moving off of 3 different and not in the same place light sources.  This gives you 3 suns in Dallas, TX.

 

 

Edited February 16, 2017 by John Butler

[Tom Hume]

Hi John. Take a look at Andrej Stancak’s 11/7/16 post at the link below. It’s a 3-D model of the entrance of the TSBD at 12:30 on November 22, 1963. 

 

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/22616-prayer-person-prayer-man-or-prayer-woman-research-thread/&page=36

 

Since Andrej knew the time, date, and location, and hence the direction and altitude of the sun, and since Andrej had created an accurate map of the entrance, his model correctly (apparently) depicted the shadows cast by the building’s structure, hand railing, etc.

 

We know the location of the Neely Street house, but we don’t know the date and time of day. But since we know that the house faces exactly true north, and we know Oswald’s approximate height, we can work the solution from the other end. With a fairly good map of the Neely Street back yard, we would be able to come very close to the correct date and time of the photo if, and only if, the shadow cast by the Oswald figure is legit.

 

Legit or not, once we have the date and time of day based on Oswald’s shadow, we will know for sure if the shadows cast by the stair overhangs are consistent with Oswald’s shadow. We will also know if that odd “V” shaped shadow from the Oswald figure’s nose is consistent, and the answers to other puzzling BYP shadow questions.

 

Andrej is a very busy guy, but I for one would like to see him pick up where he left off with his 3-D modeling of the Neely Street back yard.

 

Tom

 

Edited February 16, 2017 by Tom Hume

[Chris Bristow]

Paul, I do think the photos being fake is by far the most likely scenario. Of all the photographic evidence in the JFK case I am most convinced by John Costella's, Stemmons pincushion issues. So I am definitely in the CT camp and appreciate all that Jack White has done to illuminate the public.

[Chris Bristow]

Sandy, I will redo my test when in real sunlight when the clouds part. I could easily be off some.
 The rifle in the photo is leaning at about 27 degrees and also appears to be leaning about 45 degrees away from the cameras line of sight. So we should perceive about 70 to 75% of the total lean viewing from 45 degrees. If my estimate of 45 degrees off the line of sight is right then the total actual lean is 34 degrees.
 Testing whether the shadow should hit the pole is a tough one to measure since you need Oswalds exact distance and angle to the post , his height and exact angles of lean. How far off was your test shadow from the backyard image?
Just a thought, we all discuss if it is possible to lean over like Oswald but even if he could lean like that why the hell would he?

Edited came out, retested and got results closer to yours. I could not get it to move as much as the indoor test so I think your theory still holds.

WTF I did not put an emoji of the star in our solar system, I just wrote the word. Ok

Edited again. Just for general edification. The mistake I made was due to the light source being a lamp that was only a foot or two from the test subject. That creates a situation where the light source angle changes as I moved the pen. The Sun is too far away of course, to cause that angle change.

 

 

Edited February 17, 2017 by Chris Bristow
added material

[Chris Bristow]

When looking at the staircase shadows I am reminded how many old wooden staircases I have seen that are misaligned, like leaning posts and crooked supports under the stairs. So when we look at shadows like the ones on the staircase we have to assume the wood that the shadows fall on may not be completely flat or completely vertical. Of course we know from the moon landing hoax debunking that the angle of the shadow depends on the angle of the surface it lands on as much or more than the position of the Sun.
A slight deviation off flat or vertical will make big enough changes in the shadows angle to mess up our measurements.

Edited February 16, 2017 by Chris Bristow

[Sandy Larsen]

4 hours ago, Chris Bristow said:

Sandy, I will redo my test when in real sunlight when the clouds part I could easily be off some.

That would be great. Having the light source nearby surely introduces errors.
 

Quote

The rifle in the photo is leaning at about 27 degrees and also appears to be leaning about 45 degrees away from the cameras line of sight.

You mean, just by looking at the photo, you believe the rifle to be leaning at 45 degrees? (In the direction of the camera.) I don't know how you can determine that.
 

Quote

So we should perceive about 70 to 75% of the total lean viewing from 45 degrees.

Could you explain that please?
 

Quote

If my estimate of 45 degrees off the line of sight is right then the total actual lean is 34 degrees.

Testing whether the shadow should hit the pole is a tough one to measure since you need Oswalds exact distance and angle to the post , his height and exact angles of lean. How far off was your test shadow from the backyard image?

If you are asking how far off the shadow was from hitting my "post," let me put it this way:  The post is behind Oswald's position (that is to say, Oswald would have to look to his left and back a little to see the post). In contrast, the shadow from the tip of the "rifle" is in front of Oswald (that is to say, Oswald would have to look to his left and forward a little to see the shadow... if there was a post there to catch the shadow).

Note, however, that the result of this test depends upon the length of the "rifle" and other factors. (I just did this test again so I could answer your question) And so I'm not confident in my results.

Quote

Just a thought, we all discuss if it is possible to lean over like Oswald but even if he could lean like that why the hell would he?

Actually Chris, Andrej Stancak convinced me earlier (after a very long and intense debate) that Oswald's camera has a distortion problem. And that if you rotate a BYP image so that Oswald is standing straight, doing so will tilt the wooden structures on either side of Oswald. But that the apparent tilting of the structures was really a manifestation of the distortion. (Not true tilting.) And therefore, the reason Oswald is seen standing at an angle is due just to the print being made at an angle. (I hope this makes sense.)

But I'm gonna take another look when I have time, comparing the three BYPs, to see if that explains all the tilting that we see.

[Sandy Larsen]

5 hours ago, Chris Bristow said:

Edited came out, retested and got results closer to yours. I could not get it to move as much as the indoor test so I think your theory still holds.

I'm really glad to hear that, Chris. Mostly because I like my "proof" because it is easy to understand and easy to see. But also because of the results of some measurements I just took.

I wanted to know how far down the rifle is tilted toward the camera. (Actually, I guess this is a moot point now. Oh well, I will tell you anyway.) We know that if there is no tilt, the rifle will appear to be its real length. The more it's titled in the line-of-sight of the camera, the shorter the rifle will appear. For example, if the rifle is titled 90 degrees (total) -- in other words, pointed directly at the camera, the rifle will appear to have zero length. (I'm ignoring the effect of the 27 degree tilt toward the staircase. If we don't ignore that 27 degrees, and if the rifle is also tilted 90 in the line-of-site of the camera, then the rifle will appear short, but not zero length. And it will appear to be aimed to our left.)

I measured the apparent length of the rifle in the three photos. Here they are:

 

 

 

 

These are designated C-133a, C-133b, and C-133c respectively.

It is easy to tell that there is little or no tilt in the line-of-sight of the camera in C-133a because of the way Oswald is holding the rifle. And therefore the apparent length of the rifle in that photo will be the same as the real length. Therefore we will use that length as a reference for the other two. The apparent lengths of the other two must be less than or equal to the one in C-133a, depending upon the angles they are tilted.

Here is how I measured the lengths of the rifles. I printed the three photos. (I first scaled them so the Oswalds were about the same size in each photo. (Though this wasn't really necessary.) I needed to find a frame of reference... something on Oswald's body that was easily measured in each photo. I settled on the distance from A) the corner of the collar on Oswald's right; and  Oswald's belt line, straight down from the collar corner. I measured each of these with a ruler and called them ONE UNIT. Here are their measurements:

C-133a:  27.5 mm     (Reference)
C-133b:  27.5 mm
C-133c:  27.5 mm

I apparently did an excellent job in making the three Oswalds the same size. (Not surprising because I used the same reference measurement -- from the collar corner to the belt line  -- to scale the photos!)

Then I measured the guns. I couldn't make out where the tip of the barrel was in two of the photos. So I measured only the wood stock on each. Here are their measurements:

C-133a:  61 mm     (Reference)
C-133b:  62 mm
C-133c:  59 mm

Now, in order to compare apparent rifle lengths between the three rifles, it is necessary to normalize their measurements. You do that by dividing each rifle measurement by the ONE UNIT measurement on the same photo. I did that. I then multiplied each by 10 so that I'd have two-digit lengths, not one. Here are the results:

Rifle Stock Lengths:

C-133a:  22.2 units     (Reference)
C-133b:  22.5 units
C-133c:  21.5 units

Recall that C-133a is our frame of reference because the rifle in that photo has virtually no tilt in the line-of-sight of the camera. If the rifles are tilted much at all in the other  two photos, they must appear to be shorter. But guess what... C-133b is actually a bit longer. C-133c is a indeed little shorter, and thus is tilted somewhat in the line-of-sight of the camera. The angle of tilt is given by ARCCOS (21.5 / 22.2) = 14 degrees.

That C-133b is slightly longer, not shorter, than the reference is due to measuring errors. I believe that my measurements are accurate within about 3%. Suppose my measurement for C-133b was fully 3% off. If so, that would mean that its true reading would be 0.97 x 22.5 = 21.8". The corrected angle of tilt would be ARCCOS (21.8 / 22.2) = 11 degrees.

So, even when taking measurement errors into account, the worst-case tilt of the C133b rifle, in the line-of-sight of the camera, would be only 11 degrees.

[Chris Bristow]

Sandy, I misspoke, I meant the rifle is pointing not leaning in a direction that is 45 degrees away from the camera's line of sight and that is just eyeballed. Knowing the how far it is pointing away from the LOS and how much it leans in the two dimensional image (27 degrees) you can determine the actual amount of lean it has. I don't have mathematical formula I just set up a leaning pole and took photos from positions around it from zero degrees to 90. That is how I determined we see about 75% of the total lean at 45 degrees off the LOS. Before that test I thought the visible lean would progress in a consistent manner as my position moved from zero degrees to 90, but interestingly it does not. The best part of these investigations is learning new optical principles.
 On the lens distortion issue I can't think of any distortion that would cause the entire stairway and fence and structure on the right to distort in a uniform way. Pincushion or barrel or induced cylinder would cause bending and curving of objects within the image. I have made a careful study of those distortions for many years because I had to troubleshoot patient complaints about their eyeglass prescriptions and always take into account the type and level of distortion they saw through the lens. If the objects around Oswald were distorted but he was not we would have to see the transition from distorted background to a non distorted Oswald, but I don't see it. I think a distortion that required that much rotation to correct would be far more obvious than the subtle distortions I am used to discerning.
If the entire lens was skewed then Oswald would be too and rotating the stairs to level would  also correct Oswald to his real angle. There might be a distortion we did not need to focus on in an Ophthalmic lens. Did he mention what type of distortion he meant? 

 

[Chris Bristow]

Sandy, maybe we are defining something differently if you said the angle of 133b is 11 degrees. The visible measurable angle of the rifle in the photo is 27 degrees from straight up. So it can't be any less than that. Because we are not seeing it from a 90 degree angle( away from the direction it is pointing) we see less than the full lean. By the way when I talk about were the rifle was pointing  I mean where it was pointing in the horizontal plane not the vertical. How far off to the side, away from the camera is what I had meant. Not sure if that was a misunderstanding.

[Sandy Larsen]

 

 

 

Chris,

I don't think Andrej really knew what kind of distortion it is that he was claiming we all see in the BY photos. But he was just as certain that it was distortion as I was that it wasn't.

I'm certainly no optics expert, but I'm a technically minded person and pick things up quick. (I'm an electrical engineer, BTW.) So I read up on barrel and pincushion distortions. I already understood perspective, but I studied it further. I showed Andrej how the distortion couldn't be due to perspective. That was easy to prove... the vertical lines spread out instead of converging as they get further from the camera's line of sight.. I showed him that it wasn't barrel or pincushion distortion. That was easy too since those distortions are radially symmetrical (at least they are with regular round lenses) and the distortion we see in the BYPs is not.

And I had explanations for what we see, things like keystoning. But there was no swaying Andrej. and vice versa.

What shut me up was when he produced an Oswald family photo that showed distortion very similar to what we see in the BYPs. How could I argue with that?

Right then my train of thought switched from "what could have been done to produce this distortion," to "what could have been wrong with that camera/lens that could explain the distortion."

It occurred to me that perhaps the lens had been cast rather than being ground and polished. And that the mold was far from perfect in shape. And not radially symmetrical.

I don't know if an Imperial Reflex camera was really used to make the BYPs. But I did some research and found that those cameras did use plastic lenses, not a quality glass. I don't know if they were polished or not, but if they were they weren't polished well enough.

[Sandy Larsen]

31 minutes ago, Chris Bristow said:

Sandy, maybe we are defining something differently if you said the angle of 133b is 11 degrees. The visible measurable angle of the rifle in the photo is 27 degrees from straight up. So it can't be any less than that. Because we are not seeing it from a 90 degree angle( away from the direction it is pointing) we see less than the full lean. By the way when I talk about were the rifle was pointing  I mean where it was pointing in the horizontal plane not the vertical. How far off to the side, away from the camera is what I had meant. Not sure if that was a misunderstanding.

Yeah, we've been talking two different languages.

Just quickly, here's the way I viewed the angle(s):

1. Zero degrees is vertical, 90 degrees is horizontal.
2. The tilt of the barrel from vertical can conveniently be described as two orthogonal tilts. The first is in a plane parallel to the photograph, though which a non-tilted rifle would run. That's the tilt we can see in the photo. (I didn't measure it, but I figured it was the 27 degrees you talked about.) This tilt does not affect the apparent length of the rifle. The second tilt is in the plane perpendicular to the plane of the photograph. We cannot see this tilt. But this tilt results in the apparent length of the rifle being reduced.
3. The line-of-sight of the camera runs horizontally through the latter plane. (Which is why that tilt cannot be seen, but the effect on the apparent length can be.)

[John Butler]

This is for Tom on 3-d models:

It is as I suspected.  2-d or 3-d shadows follow the laws of nature and move off from the light source depending on where the light source is.  Here we see two not three of the three different shadow patterns / light sources observed in the BYP.  The author of this failed attempt doesn't allow you to see the third shadow pattern by cutting it off at the bottom.

It would be way to noticeable.  The shadow patterns in this example are sharp and clear.  The Oswald figure's shadow would clearly portray this photo as fake.

The shadow patterns are clearly noticeable by anyone who takes the time to look at them and notice which directions they are going.  These shadows can't be denied or argued into something else.  They are 100% there and beyond a reasonable doubt.

Edited February 17, 2017 by John Butler