Well, kids--I get the feeling that maybe we made a big jump recently. It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. My brother thinks he's pretty smart. I hate to speak too soon (but then, what difference does it make, really?), but it's possible that, one way or another, we're over the hump. There are one or two things I don't know for sure, but I'm force to deduce the most likely realities in those cases, mainly because I don't know what else it could be that's causing all this. I was going to put this off, put I can't find a good reason to.
While we're parked by the side of the road, enjoying a panoramic view of a beautiful sunset from high atop this mountain, please--allow me to grease the wheels for the downhill run:
My brother's girlfriend took up an interest in photography some time during the years in question--some time between 2001 and 2006. At one point, I believe during my last visit to Clearwater, she also mentioned that she was learning website design. This was the same visit in which "In Enemy Territory" was the one movie from his collection my brother suggested I watch and may have been the same one at which he stuck me with a couple implants. Interesting, no? (In truth, I don't know if both implants from him came on the same trip or not. I just recall waking up with a sore heal causing me to limp and him saying, "I wouldn't worry about it."--the same thing my dad said when I told him about the airport security molesting my mother (his wife!).)
Anyhoo...what would you say if I told you that--once again during a visit together at the folks' place--at her request, I allowed Lisa to take photographs of my face from different angles? She knew I was into photography and what reason could I have had to decline? She said it was an assignment for a photography class she was taking. (An interesting note: The identification of incidental details is what confirms many of these vague memories for me. Because it's a better word in that context, I was going to use "exercise," but I specifically recall her saying "assignment." If I hadn't typed "exercise" first, though, I may not have confirmed that!! I re-read it and thought, "Nope--that's not what she said. She definitely used the word, "'assignment.'" Fascinating!!)
Photography is very interesting. Working in television and dabbling in the t-shirt business, I gained a decent layman's knowledge of identifying fabricated photographs and video. What you do, see, is you look for inconsistent lighting on different elements in the pic. You identify the location of the main light source and then look for discrepancies among the various elements. Another way, in an instance where, say, for example, someone's face/head was attached to the body of another photo, you would look very closely at the skin tone and whether or not it matches the hands, etc. In such case, there would be two common cut-off points for the inserted face: the point where the neck meets the collar, or the border between the bottom edge of the jaw-line from a side angle, or the chin from a front angle, and the neck. Even if the lighting is right, you can usually tell there's just something wrong at the neck/jaw cutoff. In television they say it looks "hokey"--you can just tell it's off. Also, if the person is wearing a hat, you can tell something's wrong there.
But here's the best giveaway, if it's available: the outline of the person's hair. Unless the person has perfectly straight hair, there's way too much detail and variance in the shape of that outer outline for consumer level programs to outline it very accurately. For a graphic artist to do it manually any more accurately than that would require a lot of time and energy. Again, you can just tell that the shape of the edge is unnatural.
Of course, often times, these details can be very difficult to identify for a novice. If you're having a hard time confirming such a thing, you can always go to a television editor (You wouldn't believe the things they see.), or a film special effects editor or a magazine graphics and design editor, etc. Hell, there are lots of experts out there who can identify such things that the average person may not be able to.
Also, someone mentioned something to me in passing about a year ago about using facial recognition software to identify the orginal source photos used to create a fabricated image on the internet. Hmmmm. I bet that works pretty good, too.
I wonder how ol' Lisa's doing with her photog work and website building?......NOT.
I'm sick up and fed!
Joseph
C. Zoccali, Clearwater, Florida; Rick Wilson,
Niles, Ohio; Christine
Faranda, Cleveland, Ohio; Len Spector; Marc Greece, A&E
Networks; Reverend David Plank, Palatine Bridge, NY; Carrie (Plank) Bruno,
Queens, NY; Cynthia Green,
Tech Recruiter; Sioux
Logan, Red Stream Technologies; Mike Tricario, MTV; Sean Newman, Columbus, Ohio; Jim
Reed, Columbus, Ohio; Zynga; Marty Eggert, Cleveland, Ohio; Kathy Haxton,
Cleveland, Ohio, St. Joe’s Medical Center, Warren, Ohio; Coleman Professional Services,
Warren, Ohio; Laura
McCormick
An
Pham, anpham1111@gmail.com; Anna Stepnova, stepnova@aol.com; Barbara Anne Wolf, wolf.barbara.anne@gmail.com, (415) 812-4926; Brian Montague, jetbpm@aol.com; Charles
Crites, critesfam@sbcglobal.net; EHSOH, lovycera@gmail.com; Elizabeth
Nicolosi, elizabethnicolosi@hotmail.com; Kristy
Guertin, guertk@spu.edu; Meagan Franz, meaganfranz@hotmail.com; Miyako
Abe, mtea2006@yahoo.com; Nora Salah, nsalah01@yahoo.com; Teresa Keller, teresa@rtwwithus.org; Natasha
Warder;
.
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