Are the Trent photos legit?

What are the Trent photos

  • A real craft?

    Votes: 6 50.0%
  • A hoax?

    Votes: 6 50.0%

  • Total voters
    12
  • This poll will close: .

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
Therefore this means there had to be at least sixty seconds between each picture. Yet the object hardly moved and remains at the same distance. I would have been much more impressed if say... the object had moved substantially between images

Also, I would have liked to see pictures of the object at different distances.

Yeah, all that would be possible if UFOs arrived by appointment. If you are doing photography yourself you know how fiddly taking a photo of a sudden opportunity is. UFO witnesses go through cholesterol of emotions while they are trying to get camera to take this one-in-life-time picture. We are lucky that we got what we got.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Let me just add a little more...

If you read my article on the Kibel picture, I first came across it in 1966, shortly after it was taken. As I describe in the article, I originally thought the UFO in that picture was gold colored because it looked that way in the picture in that magazine. But of course I later realized that the copies of that picture I was seeing then and over later years were actually snapshots of the original taken under different lighting conditions. Some were even very much out of focus.

The thing that made me take a serious second look at this picture is that Kibel was still alive until recently and kept the original Polaroid print all this time. So it was possible to do a digital scan of the picture. Unfortunately, the person who did the scan made a low resolution one but still, we did end up with a pretty good scan from the original.

Most UFO pictures from the film era that we saw published in period books and magazines were just snapshots of prints of the original. Some were even doctored by book and magazine editors to make them look more impressive, while others ended up more blurry than the originals were.

And that's the problem we face nowadays when we look at these old pictures. We seldom if ever have access to the original prints or original negatives. To my knowledge, since the Rex Heflin pictures were also Polaroid snapshots, the copies we see of them are pictures of the original or of copies of the copies. There were no negatives. And unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there never were any digital scans of the original pictures.

But here is another few reasons why I have a hard time with the Heflin pictures...

Since they were taken with a Polaroid camera and are in black & white, then just about the only model camera he could have used was in the Polaroid Land series of cameras (again refer to my article on Kibel). This type of camera produced instant prints that needed to be very carefully pulled out of the camera and then - again, very carefully - they had to be peeled from their negative... after waiting around sixty seconds.

Therefore this means there had to be at least sixty seconds between each picture. Yet the object hardly moved and remains at the same distance. I would have been much more impressed if say... the object had moved substantially between images so that he would have needed to take some pictures with the object facing the front window or the back window or.. if he had gotten out of his truck and taken pictures of the object over his truck where a suspension line might have been harder (although not impossible) to set up.

Also, I would have liked to see pictures of the object at different distances. When I look at these pictures I ask myself: How is it that the UFO is just there already close by and at that one distance in all three pictures ? I would have liked to see pictures of it either arriving or departing.

In a way, that's also what frustrated me about the Kibel picture. There is just a single one close-up and nothing else. It's very frustrating that it's almost impossible to find an ideal UFO picture case where we would see multiple clear images of an object at various distances.

Excellent analysis.

Off topic but you might appreciate the work Bill Munns did with the Patterson-Gimlin film. Way more to it than just the stabilized images you see on YT. Changed my mind about the entire thing - I always thought the film was a fake.

Bill Munns

upload_2021-12-3_6-16-4.jpeg
 

UfoScan

UFO scanner
"Yeah, all that would be possible if UFOs arrived by appointment."

But that's just it ! It did not arrive. It was just there. Here you have three pictures showing the object close-up - at the same distance. It never moved further or closer between shots considering that there was at least a minute between them. And then it's gone.

Again, I'm not saying that makes it a fake, but a fake would be done just like that. Suspend a model out of the window and take a few shots of it and you are done. The photographer could take his time waiting the sixty seconds processing and peeling off the print simply because the model wasn't going to go anywhere in the meantime.

And again, when two of the three pictures are viewed stereoscopically, the object comes off as tiny and right outside the truck window. So there is little to support that the object is some distance away.
 

Todd Feinman

Show us the satellite pics...
With the Heflin photos --if the object get nearer it appears to be larger. The car window and frame provides a barrier that is a constant. With the apparent size of object at whatever distance from the car it is, one can take that diameter and apply it to the frame of the window; even if the object was right up to the window (maximum nearness), it would still be much larger than model train wheels --it would be about four inches across or so if it was right up to the window... But I don't think anyone thinks it is right up touching the window --and even if it was it would be waay too big, and has different proportions to the train wheel.
 

UfoScan

UFO scanner
"it would be about four inches across or so if it was right up to the window..."

It all depends what train wheels he may have used - or any other object for that matter. Having made my own UFO shots using three- inch objects, I know how easy it is to make them look much larger and farther away.

The Heflin pictures simply look very easy to fake to me for this reason and all the others I have given.

As I said, it doesn't make them fake. But for me, there is too much lacking to consider them authentic.
 

The shadow

The shadow knows!
A little known fact.
Evelyn Trent had a history of spotting strange objects in the sky. She had told The Oregonian in 1950 that she’d seen flying saucers at the coast three separate times, “but no one would believe me.”


On this occasion, however, her husband backed her up and never wavered about what he saw, though he admitted, The Oregonian wrote, that he had “no idea what the object was, how fast it was flying, how high it was nor where it came from.”
So we have a woman already fascinated by the subject. A husband who may have faked a UFO to please her. It may be they shunned publicity because the pics were meant as a joke or to please his wife
 

The shadow

The shadow knows!
mir7lgcu.jpg

The smoking gun IMO. Note it's connecter is tilted in the same manner as the photo. This is to me case closed.
 

Rick Hunter

Celestial
No. SP is no longer manufactured and is prohibited by law. It has been replaced by other more effective drugs.

Just to be a nitpicker, Sodium Pentothal is still a legal anesthetic but has been largely replaced by propofol. Good luck trying to find a doc these days who values their DEA license so little that they would administer it for the sole purpose of ufo memory regression
 

UfoScan

UFO scanner
"look closer"

Not identical but similar enough to make one wonder... Do alien spacecraft really look that much like rear view mirrors complete with a similar appendage at the top ?

This reminds me of the Adamski pictures where people would come up with all sorts of objects they thought could have been used to make those shots. The Adamski believers argued that "somewhat similar" is not the same as "identical".

Then at some point someone in Germany noticed that Adamski's craft was remarkably similar to the ventilators on gas lamps. But again, no one could find a perfect match. Then one day on a French UFO discussion group, someone did find an exact match !

So my point here is that it's not because the mirror in that picture is not identical to the object in Trent's image that it means it could not possibly be a rear-view mirror. It may simply be another brand of rear-view mirror !

And by the way, the Rouen picture is often brought up as proof that a similar object was photographed elsewhere in the world. Yet the Rouen picture is not identical to the Trent object either. So again... probably a different rear-view mirror was used !
 
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Todd Feinman

Show us the satellite pics...
"look closer"

Not identical but similar enough to make one wonder... Do alien spacecraft really look that much like rear view mirrors complete with a similar appendage at the top ?

This reminds me of the Adamski pictures where people would come up with all sorts of objects they thought could have been used to make those shots. The Adamski believers argued that "somewhat similar" is not the same as "identical".

Then at some point someone in Germany noticed that Adamski's craft was remarkably similar to the ventilators on gas lamps. But again, no one could find a perfect match. Then one day on a French UFO discussion group, someone did find an exact match !

So my point here is that it's not because the mirror in that picture is not identical to the object in Trent's image that it means it could not possibly be a rear-view mirror. It may simply be another brand of rear-view mirror !

And by the way, the Rouen picture is often brought up as proof that a similar object was photographed elsewhere in the world. Yet the Rouen picture is not identical to the Trent object either. So again... probably a different rear-view mirror was used !
What if... Just a thought experiment.. That not everyone who sees UFOs and takes a photo, is a lying hoaxer? What if after years of similar descriptions and some photos that are hard to discredit (where are the lines holding up these objects?) that they are indeed real? You have all kinds of witnesses including veteran air pilots over many decades describing the same types of objects and movements --would it not be unsurprising if a legit photo turned up now and again to reinforce the HUGE mountain of circumstantial evidence? It is almost a reverse Scott Waring pareidolia thing where mundane objects that come closest to being UFO simulacra must be the object. And yet there are cases where photos are taken and radar returns received while hundreds of people watch:
The day UFOs stopped play
https://media1.fdncms.com/clevescen...ced-by-paul-hynek/u/zoom/1485954/74116.0.jpeg
And yet, even though there are good photos and corroborating eyewitness testimony in somc cases --all the others MUST be fake?! You are right there are hoaxers and nasty liars, too, unfortunately. So it is hard to ferret out the truth. the CIA and others realized some time ago that they didn't need to threaten people to shut up about sightings --no one believes them or pays attention at the end of the day anyway.
 
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Todd Feinman

Show us the satellite pics...
Here is a video with Evelyn Trent describing the object:

It hovered (photographed then) before shooting off (like they do).
It is above the wires....
I also believe the Trudel photos are real --and so do his descendants I've been in touch with:
Woonsocket saucers with Cocoyoc and Yorba Linda modules
Trudel never mentioned the arms protruding through the rim of one of the pics of the second saucer --his whole life! Probably didn't notice them. They are the arms of the Cocoyoc object imbedded inside the saucer.
 
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UfoScan

UFO scanner
"What if... Just a thought experiment.. That not everyone who sees UFOs and takes a photo, is a lying hoaxer?"

First of all, let's make a big difference between people who report seeing UFOs and people who come up with UFO pictures. I have met many people who have seen UFOs - some quite close-up. They mostly keep to themselves and rarely want the attention from strangers that their accounts would attract.

But when we talk about UFO pictures, we talk essentially about highly publicized pictures where the picture - not the account - takes center-stage and becomes the focus of endless debate.

As I have pointed out in previous posts, it's very rare that people who come up with UFO pictures started out with any ill-intent. They usually start out just hearing about UFOs, happen to have a new camera and a roundish object in their surroundings. They try something out just for fun and then find that the picture or pictures come out better than they had expected. They show it to friends and then, hey, why not submit it to the local paper...

It's all innocent fun - not any intent to "fool the public".

A lot of these people after some years eventually admit they faked the pictures. Take Alex Birch for example. He not only admitted his picture was a hoax but showed how he did it. There are many others who have admitted their pictures were not real. Just in the last few years, the most famous picture taken during the Belgian UFO flap - a picture that had been declared authentic by some local scientists - was revealed to be a hoax by its author. Again, there was no ill-intent. Triangular UFOs were in the news, he was intrigued and tried to make a model of one and then took a picture of it. Same as above, the picture turned out much better than he had expected . So he submitted it to the local UFO group (SOBEPS), to the papers and suddenly, he was a center of attention. Great fun !

So here is my viewpoint: When we discuss UFO pictures we inevitably come up with names that have become associated with them over decades. If I say Trent or Heflin or Birch and yes, Adamski or Meier or... Ed Walters, everyone in the UFO community recognizes them and may want to debate whether they are real or not.

But there are so many UFO accounts over these same decades that are much more likely to be real than any of those UFO pictures. And yet we mostly ignore them. So in my view, UFO pictures distract away from the real phenomenon. Yes, some UFO pictures may be real. But the many I have seen have been mostly unconvincing. It may be that there are some... But they never have been published !
 

Todd Feinman

Show us the satellite pics...
So here is my viewpoint: When we discuss UFO pictures we inevitably come up with names that have become associated with them over decades. If I say Trent or Heflin or Birch and yes, Adamski or Meier or... Ed Walters, everyone in the UFO community recognizes them and may want to debate whether they are real or not.

But there are so many UFO accounts over these same decades that are much more likely to be real than any of those UFO pictures. And yet we mostly ignore them. So in my view, UFO pictures distract away from the real phenomenon. Yes, some UFO pictures may be real. But the many I have seen have been mostly unconvincing. It may be that there are some... But they never have been published !
That is a good point! I would be okay with tossing out the photos too.. You are right, at the end of the day, they are contaminated by hoaxes and distract from the real phenomenon. Maybe later when more real pics and footage comes out we can learn something from that.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
A little known fact.
Evelyn Trent had a history of spotting strange objects in the sky. She had told The Oregonian in 1950 that she’d seen flying saucers at the coast three separate times, “but no one would believe me.”


On this occasion, however, her husband backed her up and never wavered about what he saw, though he admitted, The Oregonian wrote, that he had “no idea what the object was, how fast it was flying, how high it was nor where it came from.”
So we have a woman already fascinated by the subject. A husband who may have faked a UFO to please her. It may be they shunned publicity because the pics were meant as a joke or to please his wife

Hadn't heard that. Where'd you find that?
 

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
But that's just it ! It did not arrive. It was just there. Here you have three pictures showing the object close-up - at the same distance. It never moved further or closer between shots considering that there was at least a minute between them. And then it's gone.

That's what UFO do most of the time, they just hang in one spot of the sky. They watch us as we watch them. Most of UFO photos in circulation were made while UFOs were hovering still in one spot, sometimes even hours on end. There is nothing unusual about UFO standing in one spot.

Look at that YT video in the post above. Are the Paul and Evelyn Trent the technically savvy people that can pull the fake off or keep the elaborate lie going, for that matter.

Critical photographic factor in Trent images is atmospheric fading away of the underside of the UFO relative to the other parts of the image as Thomas R. Morison had demonstrated in his analysis.
 

Todd Feinman

Show us the satellite pics...
That's what UFO do most of the time, they just hang in one spot of the sky. They watch us as we watch them. Most of UFO photos in circulation were made while UFOs were hovering still in one spot, sometimes even hours on end. There is nothing unusual about UFO standing in one spot.

Look at that YT video in the post above. Are the Paul and Evelyn Trent the technically savvy people that can pull the fake off or keep the elaborate lie going, for that matter.

Critical photographic factor in Trent images is atmospheric fading away of the underside of the UFO relative to the other parts of the image as Thomas R. Morison had demonstrated in his analysis.
Exactly. Also, I can't imagine that I would have seen the UFO(s) I did during the McMinnville UFO festival along with all of the strange circumstances --if the Trents hadn't seen the UFO and taken those pics exactly 60 years before:
On 60th anniversary of McMinnville UFO sighting: 2010
The same kind of light scattering / atmospheric perspective effect can be seen in the Trudel pictures too.
 
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