It’s just a great lucky shot to most, and a lot more to some. Have a look and let me know what you think–at the very least, it’s a fine example of light bending in interesting ways. I’ve got the picture and enlargements up on my website, at streamofsouls (dot) com

KC: – You write “What if I had glacoma [...]”

Well, I was diagnosed with “chronic open angle glaucoma” some 25 years ago (it’s no big deal) but saw the point made by the GIF immediately. And I certainly wouldn’t take offence at the term “aging eyes” if directed to me.

I’ve never heard a glaucoma joke, but if I ever do, I’m sure I’ll laugh and tell it to my eye doctor!

Not to answer for Scotth, but if you look at other photos of “the Deeps” exhibit at the Hull Aquarium, you will see that there is no other lighting in the corridor where people stand. All of the illumination comes from ambient light from within the fish tank.

Its obviously Mr. Fantastic, with his neck stretched way out, which is why you can’t see his body. And he’s obviously looking up at The Invisible Woman.

One of the reasons I posted exactly what I did with the image was so that anyone who wanted to could replicate my results.

I am actually glad to hear that someone took the time.

Its not that I didn’t believe you, but I wanted to see it for myself. It took about 2 minutes.

I opened the color photo at the top of this page in Paint Shop Pro (its basically the same as Photoshop, only cheaper.)
I then selected Adjust -> Color -> Channel Mixer.
I set Red and Blue to 0, and Green to 100, and saved to a new file.
I then selected “Undo” and set Red and Green to 0 and Blue to 100, and saved to another new file.
I moved both of the new files to a new folder, and opened them with Window’s built-in image viewer.
When I toggle between the two files, I see exactly the same thing as your animated gif.

Almost everything in the photo moves between the two frames – the fish, the sharks, the white spots, everything – EXCEPT the head.

Conclusion: The head in the photo is not part of the original picture.

Ain’t science great?!?

Everyone has their pet peeves. For you, it’s apparently eyeballs. For others, it’s loss of mobility. Others still, get uppity when anyone makes any sort of metaphorical statement about “craziness.” If a guy (sorry, a person) tried to avoid all language, literal or otherwise, that might offend someone, he’d have to remain silent.

Lighten up.

Neither of you apparently get it. I wouldn’t have objected to a “You need to read closer,” or “Apparently you didn’t read all of my post.” That is a statement of fact. Nor do I care if someone points out where I’m wrong. That’s a statement of fact, too. I do care very much about a jest made about physical disability. That is the offensive part.

I don’t find blindness funny. Not one little bit. I watched my grandfather gradually loose his ability to read because he could no longer make out the words, and reading was a major joy of his life. The day may well come were I *can’t* make out the background moving.

You find it odd that I thought you did it to highlight a change. You want to say I was looking at the wrong thing, then fine, I was wrong. You can use 24 point font if you like, bold, all caps. You want to say that I was wrong, period. Fine, say that as well, because I was. You can even call me a fool, because apparently I was a fool to belief this was a place for civil discourse.

But the saddest thing is that I don’t think either of you understand why a crack about needing medical attention to the eyes is an offensive thing.

Take it and run it under a stump. This blog isn’t worth it anymore. Nor is the magazine that hosts it.

Thanks, Law Mom (and others) for the kind words.

I am no professional, but love photography and digital scrapbooking, and spend a good 8 to 10 hours a week on Photoshop. Digital scrappers are always coming up with trendy techniques. Everyone is blending photos onto other backgrounds these days. It’s easy and looks exactly like, well you know.

So, either it’s a photoshop type fake, or it’s a ghost. Guess which one I vote for.

Since the article says it was taken at an aquarium in Hull, East Yorkshire called “The Deep”. So, that is certainly something that can be looked into, especially if we’ve got a reader that is close enough to pay them a visit. From their website, they seem to have sharks. I can’t tell if they are the correct type to be matches or if they have a location that shot like that could be framed from.

I have a number of other objections, the last could also be checked on site.

1) The article says that image was shot with a camera phone. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a camera phone that shoots in a wide screen format. Clearly the image is cropped, what did they crop out.

2) As mentioned by others above, let’s see the completely-unaltered-highest-resolution original if it is to be evidence of anything.

3) While it is very difficult to judge with the image provided, it is my sense that the head would 3 feet or larger in size, to be that size in that frame. I’d really like to get a photo from the same location (if such a location even exists at The Deep), with the same perspective, with a yard stick held along the glass for scale calibration.

But, I agree. It is not unreasonable that the entire photo is fraud top to bottom. For all we know, they just lifted a image off the web at random and photoshopped a head into it.

Scotth:

It is one thing to explain your analysis – quite another to do so in what seems to be to be an insulting manner. Yes, I saw the reef move, but quite frankly I thought that was an effect that you put in to draw attention to what you said you saw between the color channels.

What, so you didn’t read Scotth’s explanation of the gif that accompanied his link?

Scotth said:

Here is what you are seeing…. In the tank, green and blue light are lighting objects in the tank from different direction, which makes the appear to shift back and forth when flipping between color channels.

KC again:

You are probably right, but in explaining your analysis you have done so in a manner which I do not appreciate at all.

Notice that Scott’s more detailed explanation was after you appeared to have completely ignored his first explanation.

Maybe, by ignoring his obvious expertise, you were not being polite to Scott, hmmm?

Perhaps cutting remarks are what passes for debate these days. And no doubt some thought you were terribly clever. Yet demeaning comments do diddly squat at proving an argument to be valid.

Hey, he was calling a spade a spade.

Scott explained the image. You dismissed his explanation as speculation. Scott went on to provide a more detailed explanation in which he shredded your objections. If you have a problem with this, maybe you should have thought more before dismissing Scott’s original explanation.

To be blunt, you don’t know me. What if I was someone with macular degeneration? What if I had suffered physical trama to my eyes? What if I had glacoma or cataracts? What if I was nearly blind? And what if I just now informed you of this?

So what? Your dismissal of Scott’s explanation was still stupid, ignorant and insulting. If you did have a disability, would you prefer to be treated exactly the same way as everyone else, or be treated as something “special”?

As it happens, although I once came close to having an eye gouged out, fortunately I’m only afflicted with the normal changes in vision associated with aging. But you didn’t know that.

And nor does it have any bearing on anything.

You may want to keep that in mind. Or not. Quite frankly, I don’t really care either way.

Au contraire. The evidence indicates that you do care, otherwise you would not have posted your critique of Scott’s last comment.

Now, separately addressing the general theme of your comments above, you have ignored several key features of the situation in your repeated claims that we can’t prove anything about the origin of the picture (I refer here to your posts before you eventually and grudgingly accepted Scott’s explanation):

(1) We already know something of human nature;
(2) We already know something about optics, reflections and photography;
(3) We already know how readily-available software like Photoshop is, and how easily it can be used to achieve an effect like this;
(4) We know that there is no evidence for ghosts or any such phenomena, despite over 150 years of people seeking to prove such things;
(5) We are therefore in a position to make a judgement about the most probable source of the head in the picture. Since various aspects of the “reflection” hypothesis do not stand up to detailed scrutiny, we can conclude (even before Scott proved it) that the head was almost certainly photoshopped into the image.

1) I explained in my first post exactly what I did to the image. If I had added any shifting, I would have said so. Additionaly, I explained in the first post exactly what was causing the shifting, that the shifting (and the lack of it for the head) was what you were to be looking for.

2) A person with macular degeneration, or almost any vision problem should have been able to see the movement quite easily if they were capable of reading the page. And before you remind me that there are text-to-speech programs for the vision impaired…. Do you really expect me to believe that someone so vision impaired that they needed T-T-S would be commenting that my reveal wasn’t convincing because they couldn’t see it?

3) So, why did you think “that was an effect that you put in to draw attention”? It seemed pretty plain to me that you either did not read the accompaning text or that you were being deliberately difficult. Here is the last couple of lines of my original post as a reminder,

“Here is what you are seeing…. In the tank, green and blue light are lighting objects in the tank from different direction, which makes the appear to shift back and forth when flipping between color channels.

The head doesn’t have this effect because it was lit evenly (by color) and merely color shifted after the fact to match color of the tank.”

4) The remarks just weren’t that cutting. Try reading them in a light hearted rather than sinister tone. Read them especially in the light that I knew the only way you couldn’t see the effect is that you didn’t know what you were looking for or just didn’t want to see it.

Please don’t misconstrue your failure to read all of my opening post as a lack of caring for people with vision impairment. My grandfather is nearly blind with macular degeneration, it appears my dad will be next. I’ll know in a couple more years if that is in store for me.

Seriously, I *did* know you weren’t nearly blind for the reasons stated above. Thanks for trying to make me feal bad with the unlikely argument, though. I am sorry you were apparently embarrassed by making assumptions in direct contradiction to what I wrote.

It is one thing to explain your analysis – quite another to do so in what seems to be to be an insulting manner. Yes, I saw the reef move, but quite frankly I thought that was an effect that you put in to draw attention to what you said you saw between the color channels.

You are probably right, but in explaining your analysis you have done so in a manner which I do not appreciate at all. Perhaps cutting remarks are what passes for debate these days. And no doubt some thought you were terribly clever. Yet demeaning comments do diddly squat at proving an argument to be valid.

To be blunt, you don’t know me. What if I was someone with macular degeneration? What if I had suffered physical trama to my eyes? What if I had glacoma or cataracts? What if I was nearly blind? And what if I just now informed you of this?

As it happens, although I once came close to having an eye gouged out, fortunately I’m only afflicted with the normal changes in vision associated with aging. But you didn’t know that.

You may want to keep that in mind. Or not. Quite frankly, I don’t really care either way.

Thanks again for taking the time to make that gif. How are you on flying saucers made out of trash can lids?

Really, it only shows up in blue light. My best guess is that it is reflection inside the tank shining on the glass. It is very tough to say with such a low quality source image.

I was pretty lucky they left such a startling obvious artifact to catch the head with.

So maybe, ironically, there is a reflection here…just not of somebody’s head.

Gee, I wonder if this one’s been talked to death and back?