As some of you know, I have been interested in UFOs since age 6 and got my first UFO book at age 8. Like many UFO books, it included some pictures of alleged UFOs that I found fascinating but at the same time, somewhat suspicious. Were these pictures real or fake ? Over the years, I found myself asking that question countless times.
At age thirteen, I decided to find out for myself, borrowed my father's Polaroid camera (this was back in 1967) and tested my skills at making UFO pictures using small models that I made. The results were quite convincing. If it was so easy, then many people must have tried to do the same and sent the pictures off to newspapers and magazines in the hope they would get published. All in good fun...
But we, as UFO researchers, end up having to try and figure out which are real and which are not. And frankly, most of the UFO pictures I have seen look very easy to fake. That is because pictures taken with forced perspective are very hard to distinguish from regular ones. That is to say that a small model at close range with a scenic background will look little different than if the object were a large one some distance away.
From this fact I reasoned that the characteristic that would help authenticate a UFO picture would be if the object were partially hidden by a branch of a tree or by part of a building which we could verify was some distance away.
Back in 1978, I came across such a picture - taken by one "Billy Meier". I was intrigued but I eventually learned that there was no such tree in that spot. It seems that Billy had used a small potted tree to create that effect. In other words, both the object and the tree were small and again, forced perspective was used to create the illusion of a large object circling a tree !
Other than that, I could never find a picture or clip where a UFO went behind something far away - other than when the object turned out to be a stray helium balloon...
Then the digital age came upon us and now, people can use software to create any effect they wish although, admittedly, these doctored pictures or videos are easy to spot.
So... what would really constitute a picture that convincingly shows an object some distance from the camera ? Well, very simply one where forced perspective is not possible.
To understand this, we need to backtrack to the 19th century, when stereoscopic photography was invented. Stereoscopic photography is a technique where two pictures are taken that are displaced laterally - usually an equal distance to the human eye separation. This allows one to recreate the third dimension and locate the position in space of every object in the scene. Using this technique, a small object close to the camera will look like.... a small object close to the camera !
As early as the turn of the twentieth century, stereoscopic cameras were available to the general public. However, in 1947 (amusing coincidence), a company by the name of David White introduced a stereo camera on the American market that was designed to use 35mm color slide film. It was called the Stereo Realist.
Within a few years, several other American and European manufacturers introduced their own stereoscopic cameras. Among them was Kodak that introduced its own version around 1951.
It's a wonder nobody ever ended up taking UFO pictures with stereo cameras even though they were widely available right from the early fifties. I am especially thinking of the contactees of the fifties that claimed repeated contacts with extraterrestrials yet never cared to photograph their ships or, at best, offered very dubious images thereof. Would not a stereo camera have been the best way to document their claims ?
But this simply never happened...
Fast forward to the digital age. Back in 2009 and 2010, Fujifilm introduced two digital stereoscopic cameras: The W1 and the W3.
Many thousand of these cameras were sold and they are still widely available on the used market. So far, nobody has taken a picture of a UFO with such a camera. Will you be the first ?
At age thirteen, I decided to find out for myself, borrowed my father's Polaroid camera (this was back in 1967) and tested my skills at making UFO pictures using small models that I made. The results were quite convincing. If it was so easy, then many people must have tried to do the same and sent the pictures off to newspapers and magazines in the hope they would get published. All in good fun...
But we, as UFO researchers, end up having to try and figure out which are real and which are not. And frankly, most of the UFO pictures I have seen look very easy to fake. That is because pictures taken with forced perspective are very hard to distinguish from regular ones. That is to say that a small model at close range with a scenic background will look little different than if the object were a large one some distance away.
From this fact I reasoned that the characteristic that would help authenticate a UFO picture would be if the object were partially hidden by a branch of a tree or by part of a building which we could verify was some distance away.
Back in 1978, I came across such a picture - taken by one "Billy Meier". I was intrigued but I eventually learned that there was no such tree in that spot. It seems that Billy had used a small potted tree to create that effect. In other words, both the object and the tree were small and again, forced perspective was used to create the illusion of a large object circling a tree !
Other than that, I could never find a picture or clip where a UFO went behind something far away - other than when the object turned out to be a stray helium balloon...
Then the digital age came upon us and now, people can use software to create any effect they wish although, admittedly, these doctored pictures or videos are easy to spot.
So... what would really constitute a picture that convincingly shows an object some distance from the camera ? Well, very simply one where forced perspective is not possible.
To understand this, we need to backtrack to the 19th century, when stereoscopic photography was invented. Stereoscopic photography is a technique where two pictures are taken that are displaced laterally - usually an equal distance to the human eye separation. This allows one to recreate the third dimension and locate the position in space of every object in the scene. Using this technique, a small object close to the camera will look like.... a small object close to the camera !
As early as the turn of the twentieth century, stereoscopic cameras were available to the general public. However, in 1947 (amusing coincidence), a company by the name of David White introduced a stereo camera on the American market that was designed to use 35mm color slide film. It was called the Stereo Realist.
Within a few years, several other American and European manufacturers introduced their own stereoscopic cameras. Among them was Kodak that introduced its own version around 1951.
It's a wonder nobody ever ended up taking UFO pictures with stereo cameras even though they were widely available right from the early fifties. I am especially thinking of the contactees of the fifties that claimed repeated contacts with extraterrestrials yet never cared to photograph their ships or, at best, offered very dubious images thereof. Would not a stereo camera have been the best way to document their claims ?
But this simply never happened...
Fast forward to the digital age. Back in 2009 and 2010, Fujifilm introduced two digital stereoscopic cameras: The W1 and the W3.
Many thousand of these cameras were sold and they are still widely available on the used market. So far, nobody has taken a picture of a UFO with such a camera. Will you be the first ?