It’s a bit like believing an auto mechanic can serve as an accident investigator.

Those that actually do have the skills to evaluate images rarely, if ever, make a living doing it. There’s too little call for it, and in cases like this, no one will actually pay for the answer unless they’re quite sure it will agree with their views.

But the article just seemed to me to be the typical hack technique of finding the people who would happily provide the weirdest quotes. It’s what passes for journalism these days (and there’s no degree or level of education required for that either). Show most people that image, with no suggestive mention of angels or anything else, and they’d simply call it a reflection – it’s not like the flare directly above it wasn’t a strong indication of such.

Then they are not very good photographers.

My new summer project: I will take hundreds of pictures of stuff in very shiny places until I get an apparition that looks exactly like David Duchovny. (Well, in the sense that if I say, “hey, this is David Duchovny,” you would be inclined to maybe agree.) Then, I will start a Duchovny cult, and maybe if it got big enough we could convince them to put X-Files back on the air. I think there was an angel in one episode of that.

Then, once that is accomplished, I will take hundreds more pictures until I get one that looks just like Phil Plait. Then the cult-based fun will really begin!