Why No Good Photos?

It seems that, in almost every thread I read about UFOs and aliens (and other topics such as cryptids and ghosts) someone complains about the lack of good evidence.

"Why do they always appear to the dummy who can't use his camera/camcorder?"
"Just once why can't someone who can hold a cam steady see a UFO?"
"Another blurry light that could be anything. Why can't we get any good clear pictures?"

and so on, and so forth.

Sometimes, while reading these comments, I am inclined to agree. Then something happened to me.

I live out in the country on 10 acres, and I have a small flock of chickens, ducks, and geese who roam freely over a good portion of our land. Well over half of my land is heavily wooded, and there are parts of it we've never set foot on. Ever since a month or so after we moved in, my poultry have been periodically disappearing. No blood, no feathers, no trace .. just gone! And it nearly always happens in the daytime. We've had lots of theories and lots of experts, but no conclusive answer to what's getting free chicken dinners off of me.

Then, last Saturday, I was sitting right here at this computer reading ATS when I heard a chicken making sounds of distress and then something crash into my living room window, which is about 6 feet off the ground. I jumped up and ran to the window just in time to catch a glimpse of a chicken running/flapping around the corner of the house. When I looked to the left to see what it was running from, there was a bobcat standing just a few feet away, outside my window. Having never seen a bobcat before, my first reaction was "OMG!! That has to be a BOBCAT!" I stood there and stared for at least 15 seconds before my brain kicked in, and my next thought was "get the camera!!!" So I ran back to my desk, grabbed the camera, unzipped it out of its case, and dashed back to the window. I snapped three pictures before it was gone. Here are the two that you can even see the animal in without blowing it up:







Yup, they're HORRIBLE pictures. Blurry, inconclusive, etc etc. Now, because you know what a bobcat is and what one looks like, and you probably consider it to be very reasonable that there are bobcats living in sparsely populated areas of rural Oklahoma, you might be convinced that this is a picture of a bobcat. But if this were chupacabra, or an alien? Yeah, the skeptics would be ripping these pictures to shreds and we'd see the same old complaints: "Why can't we ever get a GOOD picture of .....?"

All I can say is, I'm an intelligent person who knows how to use my camera and can USUALLY get a good picture, I've even got good pictures of birds on the bird feeder outside my other window which were taken through the glass.

But when push came to shove and I was even a little excited and felt rushed because I knew it wouldn't stay there long .. I couldn't do any better than most of our anomaly photographers do.

So, this post is just to say that I have a little different perspective on the issue now, and I hope some of you may be moved to take it just a little easier on the folks who take "bad" pictures and video of UFOs, aliens, and other anomalies. It's not as easy as you think it will be, when it happens to you.


(edit to correct typo)

[edit on 29-8-2008 by Heike]

reply to post by Heike


Excellent post! A good argument as to why photos and videos are difficult to view at times. You also lucked out, since bobcats are quick and quiet. I saw a large one run across the road in South Dakota one day. It disappeared quickly into the grass.
I have starred and flagged the OP.

I don't know if your examples are all that good Heike.....I wouldn't have even needed a hint to know that you had snapped two photos of a bobcat. Maybe I've missed your point, but I have utterly no problem identifying what is in those photos; despite the blurring and evident camera movement.

Did I miss what you were trying to convey?

reply to post by MrPenny


Mr. Penny, I submit that this is because you KNOW what a bobcat is and what one looks like and have no difficulty whatsoever believing that I could have taken a picture of a bobcat outside my house. If this were a picture of an unknown animal or creature, you might see it very differently.

It does appear to be some type of feline, you might say, but it could be a domestic cat with a bobbed tail, or even a distorted picture of a furry dog..

Hubby and I had to spend quite a while on google to even conclude that it IS a bobcat, because at first nearly all the bobcat pictures we found show them SPOTTED, and this one doesn't have spots.

Anyway, it certainly isn't a nice clear picture of anything, and if you had never heard of a bobcat before and I were trying to use this picture to prove its existence, you might have quite a different point of view.

Thanks for the response!

it's a rock.
you people think you see space ships with green aliens in every picture.
Sorry, I had a skepticleptic fit.
Looks just like a bobcat. He looks like he could use a little lead in his diet.

reply to post by Heike


I guess I get what you are trying to state: The bobcat caught you by surprise, and when you photographed it, the photos turned out blurry. Since we do know it is a cat, that is a moot point. The point is the OP took the photos at a moments rush caused by the excitement of a bobcat going after his critters and they were blurry. If one sees a UFO or other anomalous phenomena, they too would be excited when they take the pictures and/or videos of it, which would explain a lot of blurry pictures and videos out there.

I understand your perspective well. However, I still want high quality photograph of something that I do not neccessarily know to exist. I don't know what a bobcat is but it was obvious right away that it is some sort of a cat. I haven't seen much UFO pictures that obviously show that it cannot be anything manmade.

That's the problem. To believe that a picture represents an alien ship requires (for me) that I must be able to reduce away possibilities of it being manmade. That also usually happens to require quite good photographs, but what can you do. If you take a picture of a rock, how am I supposed to know if it is of known mineral or not if the picture is blurry?

Evidence for people who haven't witnessed an UFO is something very different than for people who have.

Originally posted by Heike
Mr. Penny, I submit that this is because you KNOW what a bobcat is and what one looks like and have no difficulty whatsoever believing that I could have taken a picture of a bobcat outside my house.

You're absolutely correct, I do know what a bobcat is and looks like. It took only a glance for me to positively identify the critter in the picture. And that illustrates why so often people see blurry, odd shapes and blurt out, "that's a bird," or "them's rocks." Because they KNOW what those objects look like. I'm not faulting anyone for that, it's the way the human brain works. The human brain must categorize what the optic nerve is sending it.....hence, the arguments over out-of-focus, blurry photos.

Respectfully, your photo may not be bad enough to illustrate your point. The member rawsom wrote the sentiment well -- if the image can be categorized to a man-made or natural object, that's probably what the tendency will be.

reply to post by rawsom


Exactly!

A blurry photo of a bobcat is still recognizable as a bobcat, because we can look at an encyclopedia or go to the zoo and see a bobcat. (or search for bobcat pictures on any web search engine )

We don't have specimens of aliens or alien spaceships in zoos or encyclopedias to refer to, so a blurry picture of "something" is much more difficult to correctly identify. To convincingly identify something that we don't have a good reference for, we need a good, clear, hi-res picture to analyze - preferably from several different angles and in good lighting!

However, as I have discovered for myself, taking those good, clear, not blurred pictures of something that startles, frightens, or excites one is harder than I would have thought before I tried to get the cat on film.

Originally posted by Heike
reply to post by rawsom

 

A blurry photo of a bobcat is still recognizable as a bobcat, because we can look at an encyclopedia or go to the zoo and see a bobcat. (or search for bobcat pictures on any web search engine

)

We don't have specimens of aliens or alien spaceships in zoos or encyclopedias to refer to, so a blurry picture of "something" is much more difficult to correctly identify. To convincingly identify something that we don't have a good reference for, we need a good, clear, hi-res picture to analyze - preferably from several different angles and in good lighting!

I realize that but nevertheless it is what it takes. I would not believe people who claim they have pictures of humanoids living in hollow earth if those pictures are blurry, and it would also require a living specimen.

I did have a general term for it although I didn't know it was a Bobcat. I saw it was a cat of some kind. I also know that people take pictures of flying objects of some kind. How do I know what kind of an flying object it is if I cannot figure out its properties?

However, as I have discovered for myself, taking those good, clear, not blurred pictures of something that startles, frightens, or excites one is harder than I would have thought before I tried to get the cat on film.

That's true, I have had dissapointments myself when I have thought that I got some excellent, rare picture. Most of those are indeed blurry because of a hurry.

I see no other choice but to wait for that excellent, HDTV-quality video footage :-)

reply to post by Heike


Hey, that's not a bobcat....it's a weather balloon or swamp gas.
Exactly what direction were you facing when you took these photos....i'd like to see the originals.

Have you photoshopped these?

Perhaps what I really should say to convey my intent is:

I am astonished and embarrassed by my own inability to get a good picture of something that appeared less than 5 feet in front of my large window in broad daylight.

Had you asked me before it happened, I would have been quite confident that I could get a GOOD picture of something that showed up that close to me and stayed relatively still for that long. But I couldn't do it.

I'm not asking or expecting anyone to be more convinced or accepting of the blurry pictures and shaky videos, I'm just saying that I'm going to have more compassion and understanding towards those photographers from now on and I hope you might do the same. How can I criticize someone else for not getting a GOOD picture of a UFO buzzing their house when I couldn't even get a good picture of a silly old bobcat?

I won't change my expectations of what I will consider good evidence, and I won't be one whit less inclined to say that a certain picture is too blurry or shaky or out of focus to be good evidence; I just won't be so hard on the poor guy who was doing the best he could and didn't get a better picture/video because he was excited, afraid, rushed, or stunned.

I agree with you here. No reason to be rude because of a bad photograph. It is fair, since I cannot take a crystal clear photograph on anything in a hurry, either.

As a side note, professionals usually take hundreds of pictures of something and come up with just a few that are good enough to be published or sold. For amateurs such a ratio is usually something like 1/10 000.

what about the hundreds of thousands of amatuer astronomers all over the world who are constantly looking at the sky and taking pictures. How come none of them have seen an alien spaceship?

I fully understand what you're pointing out with those photos.

But I gotta say in this case I probably would have reached for a rifle before a camera.

I'm going to agree with yeti101 completely. With all the astronomers in the world, not a single one of them has been able to discover a UFO….? C-mon now we can discover planets and stars in other solar systems but when it comes to spaceships flying around the planet, it becomes mission impossible?

Although your contention that astronomers don't see UFOs is quite off topic from my OP, I would like to respond.

A List of Sightings by Astronomers

Sightings by Astronomers

Astronomers and other Scientists

Astronomers DO see UFOs!

If either of you would like to discuss this, let's start another thread .. this one is actually about cutting photographers of UFOs (and other anomalies) a little more slack.

Thanks!

I bet if you replayed that scenario 100's of times over you'd eventually get a clear picture of it. However in the case of Alien Spacecraft this is not the case. Thousands and thousands of blurry blobs and never anything clear.

p.s your second photo isn't that bad.