Is this the same person?

[Andrej Stancak]

Ray:

I did some more experiments with a generally distributed light and how it could affect distribution of brightness on my arm. I am away from home at the moment and cannot retrieve the photographs to show them right now but will post in due time. Basically, I stood in the back of the room away from a window during a cloudy day. Thus, there was, of course, light that illuminated my arm and it was more intense as I was getting closer to the window. However, the light was distributed with equal intensity over my entire arm and hand and my hand never showed a bright spot. The fleshy upper forearm appeared brighter than the hand under such circumstance. The walls were not really continuous high-reflective surfaces (there were bricks  and tiles on parts of the wall) with only perhaps the white inner pillar at the entrance giving some reflected light. Thus, I am not convinced that the opposite wall could possibly reflect enough light to cause somewhat brighter spots on Prayer Man's right arm and hand.

[Ray Mitcham]

1 hour ago, Andrej Stancak said:

Ray:

I did some more experiments with a generally distributed light and how it could affect distribution of brightness on my arm. I am away from home at the moment and cannot retrieve the photographs to show them right now but will post in due time. Basically, I stood in the back of the room away from a window during a cloudy day. Thus, there was, of course, light that illuminated my arm and it was more intense as I was getting closer to the window. However, the light was distributed with equal intensity over my entire arm and hand and my hand never showed a bright spot. The fleshy upper forearm appeared brighter than the hand under such circumstance. The walls were not really continuous high-reflective surfaces (there were bricks  and tiles on parts of the wall) with only perhaps the white inner pillar at the entrance giving some reflected light. Thus, I am not convinced that the opposite wall could possibly reflect enough light to cause somewhat brighter spots on Prayer Man's right arm and hand.

Cheers, Andrej. But still can't see how from his position in the photo, his arm or wrist could have been in the sun. He appears to be totally in the shade.

Edited October 24, 2019 by Ray Mitcham

[Chris Bristow]

Andrej, I re posted your overhead view from the Prayerman thread. To have sunlight on both the hand and forearm  would he have to have the forearm at almost the same angle the Sun is coming in at?

Ray, in this overhead the light hitting the East wall is very low. But the light reflecting off it at 39 degrees(The Sun's elevation) would hit the floor at around 54 degrees and bounce back up at 54 degrees towards the entrance doors but some would also go to his face. I think the East wall would add some light.

Overall I think most of the light on the subject is coming up from the  street and everything else in front of the TSBD. Regardless of the azimuth Every object visible from the alcove is reflecting some light into the alcove. That adds up. If you stood in the alcove on a very bright sunny day you might feel the need to squint as you looked out, that illustrates just how much ambient light makes its way into the alcove from every object in your view.
  There seems to be some shadow from the subject on the wall behind him. It is raised up above his right shoulder which indicates it is coming from below. The light reflecting off the cement floor and everything outside of the alcove is lighting the subject. The ceiling looks like it is getting a lot of reflected light which  is coming up from the floor, sidewalk etc. The ceiling must also be reflecting a bit of light down to the subject.

 

Edited November 12, 2020 by Chris Bristow

[Andrej Stancak]

5 hours ago, Chris Bristow said:

Andrej, I re posted your overhead view from the Prayerman thread. To have sunlight on both the hand and forearm  would he have to have the forearm at almost the same angle the Sun is coming in at?

Chris:

the version of my 3D reconstruction you posted does not take into account the sequencing of brightness which I first saw only in June. I should be in the process of re-modelling Prayer Man to a new pose in which his left hand is in the shadow and his right arm parallels the shadow line with only the back of the hand and a tiny portion his right upper forearm and upper part of his left leg exposed to the sunlight. Instead, I have worked on a video demonstrating Mrs. Stanton in Altgens6 as this project is long overdue. For some people, it is merely saying how things are or should be. For me, there are months of tedious work to come up with a new solution.

In the picture below, the "old" solution is the one you posted. The "new" solution is the one which reproduces the brightness maps reconstructed with ImageJ program (the sequence of maps with red background) - in that solution, the left hand is not hit by sunlight and the right forearm parallels the shadow line. You may see that the differences between the versions look like very small but this is the thing: only a half of an inch or inch difference decides about how each version fits the original. The left panel shows Prayer Man with "new" solution overlaid.

 

The distributed light from a generally illuminated area of the street would not cause the bright spot on Prayer Man's right hand. Such distributed light would be homogeneous and equally spread over the entire Prayer Man's body and Prayer Man's right hand and left hand would be of equal brightness (they are not). This is demonstrated in the right-hand column of images in my previous post. 

 

 

 

Edited October 25, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[Chris Bristow]

Great, yes the newer version of his arm makes sense. And I do think the highlights on the forearm and Knuckles is due to him being in the direct light not the ambient light. I was just making the point that the light on his body seems to be coming up from Below. In one of the other films there is a reflection coming off his wrist for a moment. It looks like prayer man has a wrist watch on and for a moment the crystal reflects outward. But also in the Darnell photo we've been working with it looks like a shadow on his wrist and a small highlight it also looks like a wrist watch.

[Andrej Stancak]

Chris:

you raised the problem whether some specific details such as wrist watch or maybe a metal band were on Prayer Man's arms. I do not know yet. The pictures I saw do not indicate this but we are in realm of guessing. I would hope that the higher resolution of Darnell available to the Sixth Floor Museum could one day be also accessible to us.

I work on reviving Tom Wilson's image analysis method in the hope to maybe disclose some more layers of information in Darnell film and this would also address the points you raised. I hope to have the whole of Tom Wilson's setup ready by Christmas or early next year. There is a lot of technical stuff to solve there. Together with a better resolution scan of Darnell, it should be possible to extract as much information as possible from Darnell and other pictures or films.

 

[Chris Bristow]

On 10/25/2019 at 1:18 AM, Andrej Stancak said:

Chris:

you raised the problem whether some specific details such as wrist watch or maybe a metal band were on Prayer Man's arms. I do not know yet. The pictures I saw do not indicate this but we are in realm of guessing. I would hope that the higher resolution of Darnell available to the Sixth Floor Museum could one day be also accessible to us.

I work on reviving Tom Wilson's image analysis method in the hope to maybe disclose some more layers of information in Darnell film and this would also address the points you raised. I hope to have the whole of Tom Wilson's setup ready by Christmas or early next year. There is a lot of technical stuff to solve there. Together with a better resolution scan of Darnell, it should be possible to extract as much information as possible from Darnell and other pictures or films.

 

Should be interesting.

[Ray Mitcham]

On 10/25/2019 at 9:18 AM, Andrej Stancak said:

Chris:

you raised the problem whether some specific details such as wrist watch or maybe a metal band were on Prayer Man's arms. I do not know yet. The pictures I saw do not indicate this but we are in realm of guessing. I would hope that the higher resolution of Darnell available to the Sixth Floor Museum could one day be also accessible to us.

I work on reviving Tom Wilson's image analysis method in the hope to maybe disclose some more layers of information in Darnell film and this would also address the points you raised. I hope to have the whole of Tom Wilson's setup ready by Christmas or early next year. There is a lot of technical stuff to solve there. Together with a better resolution scan of Darnell, it should be possible to extract as much information as possible from Darnell and other pictures or films.

 

Best of luck with your project, Andrej. I believe that Tom Wilson showed the myriad of problems with most of the available photographs. It is a pity that his system died with him.

[Andrej Stancak]

It is a long shot but one worth trying. I did not expect to learn quite a lot about nondestructive material testing which was Tom's area of expertise. The whole field evolved dramatically since 1990'.

Edited October 27, 2019 by Andrej Stancak