60th anniversary of the backyard photos

[Chris Bristow]

8 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Michael,

I have some related information that you might find useful since you seem to have become somewhat of an expert on this  topic.

Others might find this useful or interesting themselves.

We have a forum member named Tom Hume who I haven't seen posting in many years. I ignored most of his posts because they were generally about numerology or some other pseudoscientific nonsense. (Sorry, Tom.) But one time he said that if you take two of the BYPs and viewed them with a stereoscopic viewer, you would indeed see the background in 3D.

So I bought a cheap 3D viewer and tried it, and by golly it worked! But not in the normal way. It worked only if the two photos were rotated by 90 degree (i.e. tipped over). It was as though you were there in the back yard and could see 3D only if you had you your head tipped sideways.*

The odds of this happening by chance are very low, thus indicating a probable forgery. (The HSCA even new about this phenomenon. So why didn't they mention the probable forgery?)

The most likely way those stereoscopic photos were made was with a stereoscopic camera rotated sideways. Stereoscopic cameras were popular at the time.

Anyway, this is yet one more piece of evidence pointing to  a forgery.

 

* BTW, FWIW.... Actually physically rotating your head probably won't do what  my above mind-experiment makes you think it will do. If you rotate your head, your eyes will rotate in the opposite rotational to compensate. Just try it in front of a mirror and you will see that what I'm saying is true. Eye muscles try very hard to keep eyes level.

 

Sandy, the ability for our visual system to take two separate inputs from our eyes and fuse those into one image is twice as hard for a vertical displacement Than the horizontal. The tolerance for unwanted prism displacement in a pair of eyeglass lenses is 6/10 of a diopter in the horizontal plane but only 3/10 in the vertical. A diopter is a measurement of the power of the lens. One diopter of power will bring light to a focus at one meter, two diopters a half meter, Etc.

 Our eyes are physically designed to converge in the horizontal axis as the reading material gets closer. But the actual fusing of two separate images into one is done in the brain. The brain is always converging images that are separated on the horizontal due to the distance between the eyes. But it has little experience trying to converge objects that are vertically displaced. So it might have been easier on your eyes to rotate it 90° so your brain can fuse images in a manner similar to your normal vision.

 

Edited April 4, 2023 by Chris Bristow

[Michael Griffith]

As I've said many times in online discussions, if WC apologists want to prove that the backyard photos are authentic, all they have to do is either (1) duplicate the variant shadows in valid and realistic conditions, or (2) conduct a reenactment where an IR camera is handed back and forth to forward the film between exposures and where the resulting pictures have only microscopic differences in the distances between the objects in the backgrounds. 

So far, neither event has occurred. When Norman Mailer claimed in Oswald's Tale that Lawrence Schiller had duplicated the variant shadows in a reenactment, he declined to include any of the photos from Schiller's reenactment. When I finally got Schiller to send me one of the pictures from his reenactment, it was quickly apparent that the photo did not show a duplication of the variant shadows--in fact, it showed the opposite. When I wrote Mailer and Schiller about the photo, neither of them replied.

When the HSCA PEP could find only "very small" (their term) differences in the distances between the background objects in the photos, surely it must have occurred to them that it was extremely unlikely x 10 that the photos were taken in the manner that Marina claimed they were taken. Mr. Mee pointed out that it would be difficult even for a professional photographer using an automatic camera, much less the IR camera, to take three photos that would have such virtually identical backgrounds. 

[Michael Crane]

IIRC,that's not even the mail order Carcano rifle.

Edited April 7, 2023 by Michael Crane

[Charles Blackmon]

The entire body has a lean to it from his feet all the way up to the collar, then all of a sudden the head is perfectly vertical. Totally ridiculous, but the so-called experts (PEP?) think this photo is authentic.

[Charles Blackmon]

Has anybody seen any studies of 133-a that show that the head is outsized for the body? No question it looks too big, in addition to looking planted on top of the torso.

[Charles Blackmon]

Here are a couple more BYP inconsistencies since the last one got no explanation.

Oswald looks to be about the same size as the post holding the stairs, which has been described as 5'. Oswald is 5'-9". Did Oswald shrink while his head appeared to grow?

What about the 'black dog nose' sticking out of the fence on 133b? Is this not the result of some kind of photo compositing process?

[Chris Bristow]

18 hours ago, Charles Blackmon said:

Here are a couple more BYP inconsistencies since the last one got no explanation.

Oswald looks to be about the same size as the post holding the stairs, which has been described as 5'. Oswald is 5'-9". Did Oswald shrink while his head appeared to grow?

What about the 'black dog nose' sticking out of the fence on 133b? Is this not the result of some kind of photo compositing process?

The top of the post is about 5 ft 8 in. Oswald is a little closer to the camera than the post and is why he appears about 4 in taller than it. The rise on each stair is 8 in and the post intersects with the stairs between the 8th and 9th step.

 The large head in 133a has been attributed to the fact that the camera is tilted down which causes some magnification towards the top of the photo. 133b is tilted slightly above the level plane and causes opposite magnification at  the bottom of the photo. Some photographic testing was done by the WC using a dummy head to demonstrate the basic principle. I think it is somewhat exaggerated and doesn't really give a satisfactory answer Imo.

 I recently used a stereoscopic viewer to see how Oswald would show up. His torso and arms cannot provide any stereoscopic effect because they moved to very different positions between photos. There is a bit of stereoscopic effect on his head and knees. It is not a real effect, it is just the result of him moving to a slightly different position so the background lines up differently in both photos. That mimics The Parallax we see when we switch from one eye to the other. slight shifting of the background allows our brains to create the 3d effect regardless of whether the camera has moved or the subject has moved.

The 3D image below can be viewed with the stereoscopic viewer placed right on the screen. The image of the two houses should be sized to 63 mm across for best viewing. The image on the left sides is of the pillars in front of the tsbd. It has a very clear and easy to see 3D to it. All it takes to create the very strong 3D is to place the two identical images of the TSB pillars at slightly different positions relative to the house in the background.

Within the photo the pillar and brick wall behind it don't have any 3D effect. That is because both pictures are the same pasted image. So the bricks and pillars within the photo don't have any 3d effect.

 The second set of photos with the vase in front of the Martian landscape book does not have a 3d effect relative to the background. That is because they are both pasted to basically the same location relative to the house. But within the photo the vase is clearly a 3D image in front of the book. Just placing the vase in a different location in each photo creates the 3D between the book and the vase. 

Making a single 3D object from existing photos is easy but making all the objects in the yard 3D would be much harder. Objects in the foreground would have to be displaced more than objects behind them. The biggest problem is moving an object leaves a blank space where it was moved from. There's no other photographic information you can use to fill in that blank space because in the original photo we can't see what was behind the object being moved. The only way around that is to have two photos from different directions, but if have photos from off angles you don't need to make a fake 3D image in the first place.

[Charles Blackmon]

@Chris Bristow133-a: his head going off in a different direction than the rest of the body. Have you studied this and found an explanation?

 

What about Black Dog Nose in 133-b?  

[Chris Bristow]

The black dog nose looks strange but I can't say it's anything other than just a photographing defect. Can't see any logic to manipulating that part of the screen.

 His head has a little tilt to it but I don't see that as odd. I have recreated the dimensions of the backyard with the positions of the camera and Oswald and I don't see any problems with the Shadows. Even the shadow under his nose is correct.

The only thing I find very odd is his lean in 133a. If you accurately duplicate his stance you're either on the verge of falling over or have Fallen. The position of his feet and hips is crucial to accurately duplicating The Stance and I've never found a way to make it work.

[Charles Blackmon]

3 hours ago, Chris Bristow said:

 

The only thing I find very odd is his lean in 133a. If you accurately duplicate his stance you're either on the verge of falling over or have Fallen. The position of his feet and hips is crucial to accurately duplicating The Stance and I've never found a way to make it work.

I am admittedly going on memory but didn't you earlier say that you were unable to create a stereoscopic view of the background which would indicate that the backgrounds are basically the same? Wouldn't that indicate fakery?

[Chris Bristow]

2 hours ago, Charles Blackmon said:

I am admittedly going on memory but didn't you earlier say that you were unable to create a stereoscopic view of the background which would indicate that the backgrounds are basically the same? Wouldn't that indicate fakery?

My problem with getting a good 3d effect from the background is related to the fact that the camera barely moved.

The most obvious shift of background is the roof of the house in the background against the top of that post next to Oswald. The distance between those two objects is about 30 or 40 ft. I'm confident a stereoscopic viewing of the top of the post and that roof would give a good 3D image. The roof appears at a different position in each of the three backyard photos and in itself demonstrates they are not the same photo.

[Charles Blackmon]

12 hours ago, Chris Bristow said:

My problem with getting a good 3d effect from the background is related to the fact that the camera barely moved.

 

I am having a hard time with "the camera barely moved" and another issue. Here is what I posted last night on the "Marina Oswald" thread:

So Marina takes the first picture, hands the Reflex camera to Lee to advance the film, takes it back from Lee and shoots another picture. This would be 133a and 133b.

When you compare these pics the backgrounds look pretty much the same. Kind of interesting that on a late March day that the records show a 12 mph wind, the vegetation looks identical. 

 

[Chris Bristow]

14 hours ago, Charles Blackmon said:

I am having a hard time with "the camera barely moved" and another issue. Here is what I posted last night on the "Marina Oswald" thread:

So Marina takes the first picture, hands the Reflex camera to Lee to advance the film, takes it back from Lee and shoots another picture. This would be 133a and 133b.

When you compare these pics the backgrounds look pretty much the same. Kind of interesting that on a late March day that the records show a 12 mph wind, the vegetation looks identical. 

 

Yes the camera barely moved between shots and the wind didn't seem to be blowing when the photos were taken, but no conclusions can be drawn from those facts.