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Post by Ginnie on Jul 11, 2007 0:04:06 GMT -4
Me being an amateur, I'm not sure if my investigation of this picture is correct or not. This picture is from the site: web.archive.org/web/20010603120457/http://www.forteantimes.com/artic/94/moon.htmland it seems to be an article written by David Percy, Here, he analizes the picture. The yellow lines are his, supposedly proving that all shadows are parallel. I downloaded the picture and inserted green lines indicated where I thought the shadows directions are - which aren't parallel. Am I doing something wrong here? I mean, he picked the picture. Seems like a poor choice to prove his point - blurry, non-straight objects (trees), yellow lines corresponding to - what? www.webhome.look.ca/~gninuopk/images/parallelshadows.jpgPercy's comment on the picture (without my green lines of course): Take a look at photo 1, typical tree shadows. Notice the virtual parallel lines of shadow - and the shadow side of the trees is dark. No detail. This is not surprising. Post modified to use URL of image,
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Post by Count Zero on Jul 11, 2007 0:23:50 GMT -4
Am I doing something wrong here?
No, you did it right. Percy is wrong.
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on Jul 11, 2007 0:24:01 GMT -4
Am I doing something wrong here? No, it looks like you did it just right. I mean, he picked the picture. Seems like a poor choice to prove his point... Yes it does, but then again, it would be hard to find any photo to prove his point since he's trying to prove an incorrect premise. ...yellow lines corresponding to - what? Obviously not the shadow directions.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jul 11, 2007 0:55:24 GMT -4
I'd suggest that your bottom left line is slightly off, but other then that.... You'll note that one of his lines is drawn on top of the shadow, but if you look closely it is not actually in line with the shadow, while the other one is draw between the shadows, and doesn't correspond to either.
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 11, 2007 1:02:40 GMT -4
On that line I followed the shadow of the trunk of the tree, it seemed to branch off in two different directions, Pretty crappy picture to try and figure out,
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 11, 2007 1:07:58 GMT -4
Well spotted. Percy is out to lunch on this one.
Notice how the lower, left-hand yellow line just splits the difference between the tree trunk shadows on either side. You don't notice the subtle difference between the left shadow and the yellow line, and between the yellow line and the middle tree shadow. Instead, superimpose the shadows in your favorite image editing program and make them transparent so you can see that they are clearly at different angles.
The second, right-hand yellow line is drawn over the shadow it's supposed to indicate. We'll never know whether the shadow really lies in the direction Percy tells you. But as long as the yellow lines are parallel themselves, you won't check to see whether they actually correspond to any shadows.
Shortly before he stopped taking reader comments, Percy conceded that not all shadows cast by the sun are expected to be parallel, but he still maintains that the shadows in Apollo photographs are "too" divergent. He doesn't explain how he knows this.
I and others pointed out that one of his other example photos -- the artistic silhouette of the cowboy -- shows a fully radial pattern of shadows cast by the sun going literally in every direction. He had intended that picture to illustrate photography of shaded objects and he didn't realize that it pretty much devastated his previous claims about shadow direction.
That's when he stopped taking reader comments.
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Post by alex04 on Jul 11, 2007 3:07:35 GMT -4
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Post by Mr Gorsky on Jul 11, 2007 4:58:02 GMT -4
David Percy has obviously never stood between a set of rail tracks and looked straight down them. That would teach him about the effects of vanishing point perspective on parallel lines.
I honestly don't see what he is trying to achieve by peddling this particular line. Primary school kids know that parallel lines don't look parallel in the 3-dimensional real world.
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Post by ineluki on Jul 11, 2007 5:07:31 GMT -4
Am I doing something wrong here? Yes, you are assuming knowledge and honesty on the Hoaxer side. IMHO they usually lack at least one of these. Percy is trying to bluff with his picture, and relies on the lazyness and general will to belief of his audience.
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Post by BertL on Jul 11, 2007 6:29:28 GMT -4
I seriously wonder why he drew the yellow line on the left, right where there's no shadow of anything at all. I mean, seriously, is he doing it on purpose or something?
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Post by nomuse on Jul 11, 2007 7:28:30 GMT -4
Yah.
It's not about evidence, it's about the appearance of evidence. It's about looking good. That's why degrees are so important in the HB world -- not because the people carrying them can actually make a reasoned argument or do a decent job explaining a subject to the laymen, but because an advanced degree means "Trust me and believe whatever I say."
Also why videos are so important. You can make an impassioned argument in print but the most powerful argument in that medium relies on the active participation of the reader. You drag them in by logic as much as by rhetoric. Video, on the other hand, is a lazy media (apologies to our local videographers!) You need only the passion of the argument, and you can pump it up with music, camera technique, the right kind of spokesmodel.
When someone says "Look at this video" what I expect is an _emotional_ argument. When someone says "Read this" I at least have the hope that I am going to see a reasoned sequence of logic -- and maybe even some footnotes and references. (And if it is a technical subject...well, at least a little math!)
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Post by BertL on Jul 11, 2007 7:31:05 GMT -4
Video, on the other hand, is a lazy media (apologies to our local videographers!) You need only the passion of the argument, and you can pump it up with music, camera technique, the right kind of spokesmodel. Hey hey, I'm an amateur videographer too, and it takes quite a bit of skill and experience to know how to manipulate your audience without them knowing it!
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Post by nomuse on Jul 11, 2007 7:58:18 GMT -4
Heh. Tell me about it. I've been studying up on film language, hoping it would give me some insights as I try to learn how to draw sequential art (but I also just got the Eisner book to read....)
As with a lot of things, you can add MSG. A good musical score, for instance, is a tough thing to do. A generic library cue will smack the audience with the wet mackerel of obviousness, but it will still have an effect on them.
Heck, come see or hear the designs I do for the stage, and you'll find I'm horribly guilty of all the string-pulling, trite, cheap cliches I can get away with (and several I shouldn't have.)
On the scale of such things, it may be (relatively!) easy to make a sleazy video but it's even easier to make a bad web page. And it takes about the same amount of time for the casual reader/watcher to figure out there's no meat there. Although at least with a web page you can skim! Video forces you to absorb how much, or how pitifully little, it has to say at a pace set by the videographer.
I think the problem is with, basically, genre conventions. Video's strengths are emotion and it usually plays to them. Text's strength is in reasoned argument (and you can tell pretty quickly if it is delivering).
And that's the essential of the point I've been attempting to make (showing a very poor ability with text myself -- can I blame a late night?) That when someone says "Here's my argument" I can look forward to, well, an _argument_. When someone says "Here's a video" I can reasonably expect to find little to no argument but a lot of "feeling."
Plus -- and not a minor point -- it is really annoying in a web forum to try to respond to an argument made somewhere else. Please put the words on the page so they can be directly referred to by the answer!
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 11, 2007 13:58:10 GMT -4
That's a great picture. I guess an HB could say the picture was taken with some sort of fish eye lens or something. But the again, all you would have to do is take a walk in the park to find that it's accurate. Which is what I'm going to do right now, and take a picture.
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 11, 2007 14:50:34 GMT -4
Drat. It's overcast and too early in the afternoon. Its later now and this is what I came up with. I took the picture today about half a block away down the street:
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