Best Pareidolia in History: Dr. King, James Bevel, JFK, Lincoln, Goddess of Liberty in iconic photo

Here's the one that bears a slight hint of LBJ, head tilted downwards and from the left, the image "looking" downwards at about the same angle as the RFK image. The white cloud seems to be floating by his head, and is not part of his head except for his left ear (although in the picture of the real LBJ celebrating Christmas posted below he does seem to have white hair along the side, although not as bushy as the white cloud). This one is, of course, questionable, but either in the ballpark or in the ballpark's parking lot.

I was lol yesterday because I was hesitant to include this image, since it wasn't perfect enough, and then once again realized that the obviously rapidly moving clouds that formed the other intricate and detailed images only held that exact position for a few seconds - the exact seconds that James Karales took the picture - and they all would have changed and shifted shape almost immediately. And there I was fretting that "LBJ's nose wasn't solid enough", and that the white cloud was blocking his standard slicked-back hair (although he went gray and long-hair during the last portion of his life), and that his prominent ear, although there, wasn't totally clear. LBJ beggars can't be choosers, but if I were directing those tiny atmospheric bits of water condensastion swirling in a maelstrom of wind circulating in a combination of cold and hot air I would have ordered up a little more detail in this one.



His cloud "image" is looking down at the angle he's shown looking here (not from a cloud, but in his normal environment of "every day is Christmas" at the LBJ White House) but just a little more to his right.

reply to post by Aleister


A wise man once said "Man tends to see faces in the clouds, but he never see clouds in people's faces". Don't know who said it, but he must have been fairly sensible

Humans have a unique ability of finding system in chaos. The same could be said of the Cosmos and it's supposed owner.....

reply to post by Utnapisjtim


Nice thoughts. I saw a cloud in a person's face once. Turned out to be the fog of war. Or the fog of anti-war, a different kind of fog entirely.

Since I'm doing a few posts of summary, I'd like to reprint one of my favorite posts on this thread, and my favorite personal response, which sums up why I'm putting myself through the rack here:

zazzafrazz
I see Voldemort.

Aleister

zazzafrazz
I see Voldemort.

Alright. Now imagine that your picture was part of a real unshopped picture and not a graphic, an iconic photograph of the 1997 Hogwarts to London march, the most influential march by wizards and witches to obtain their full rights as citizens of Britain. Then in the cloud formation of that photograph you find not only Voldemort, but Dumbledore, Harry Potter, a couple of the founders of Hogwarts, and the Goddess of Magick, all looking down approvingly upon the line of marching wizards and witches.

If you were the first one to spot those influential wizards and witches in the most iconic photograph of their most famous march, you'd likely put up a thread and work it too.

As the bard said, "And so it goes".

reply to post by Aleister


If we are to believe in some art mystique and myth, Michelangelo received the motifs he painted in the ceiling of the Sixtene Chapel while gazing at the clouds, a favorite activity of his. Myself, I also love cloud-gazing, and I see all kinds of things there, even x-rated stuff-- and in the middle of the day! Go figure....

Should have done this earlier, since I start the link in my signature after these were posted by Observer 1. This first one, which he thought may be Bevel and I'm thinking may be an Abe Lincoln candidate, is actually quite phenomenal by itself. That this alone was found in the clouds of an iconic photo is pretty cool:



And then Observer1's large pic, which he describes on page five of this thread, adds more texture to the fun collection of images in one photograph:

Well, since you asked me too...

"Necklace..." (sounds of running, cheap penny-loafers... hesitation... slow, plodding return).

I swear Al, you are bent on diminishing my stunning reputation on this site.

And yeah, after a few chem stimuli of one's choice the "liberty" chick could be seen as wearing a necklace... that's as far as I go.

Baddogma
Well, since you asked me too...

"Necklace..." (sounds of running, cheap penny-loafers... hesitation... slow, plodding return).

I swear Al, you are bent on diminishing my stunning reputation on this site.

And yeah, after a few chem stimuli of one's choice the "liberty" chick could be seen as wearing a necklace... that's as far as I go.

That really means you have a good eye for detail. Good find. Yes, when you told me, it was then obvious that she has, in these photos, something running along the line of her neck where a necklace would lay. Either that image or an image of an ornate fringe along the v-neck of her dress. But more likely, although I'm not an expert, it's a pixel distortion - or something related to it - and is not on the original photograph. And the main reason I say that this is more likely an in-process transfer artifact, and less likely appearing in the original photograph itself, is because: wt..., a necklace??!! Wouldn't that be nice.

So can someone give a pixel analysis of this one please, and of the tiara, which may be a photo artifact or, as I'm leaning, being in the original photo itself. Thanks.

EDIT: Just in case it is on the original photo, I'm wondering if there's an image of a pendent in there, what type of lacing would be used in the cloud dress, and the style and historic era that her tiara would fall into - these are some questions that come to mind. The necklace and the tiara are a little too perfect, so pixelizaton artifacts are maybe a better explanation at this point simply because they are too perfect to be easily believed. Can someone with more experience with photo-to-computer technology give a look at these and give an opinion? Thanks.

Here's the section of the pic containing the "tiara" image of the "Goddess of Liberty" image. It also contains her right eye, which is quite detailed when zoomed in on.

Please use zoom to enlarge this picture. Even though there are pixel borders when I zoom in on it (I tried to make this one larger but I'm at the hit and miss stage of knowing how to use photo editing on my computer) the clouds themselves seem to still make the shapes which I and Baddogma are calling "segments" of the "tiara", both right along the hairline as well as the five or six sectioned top-portion which emerges from the middle of her hair and reaches above it.

That eye is very detailed, by the way. I haven't seen it extremely zoomed in before and am a little surprised at its detail. I just went up to about 700 percent and the eye is made darker (bluer on this pic) by the pixel that it sits on, which is of a darker blue than the rest. At that percent it still seems as if the cloud separations are real instead of processing artifacts, and that the white cloud itself had those divisions of cloud/sky within it when the photograph was originally taken.

This is an insult to Dr. King

simple. there is not one "subject" that you listed that i care about so why would i "see" any of the pictures? anyway, the only clouds im interested in seeing are of the mushroom variety, especially if the are over bejing, moscow, paris, tehran, riyadh, D.C. and rome !

3u40r15m
This is an insult to Dr. King

It is an honoring of Dr. King. King called for full Voting Rights for all Americans in a 1957 speech in Washington D.C. at the Lincoln Memorial, and followed up on it during his years of major activism. When he came to Selma in 1965 to participate in SCLC's major push for voting rights, and that movement culminated in the march from which this photograph was taken, he put his stamp of approval on that movement and that action. I do not see how saying that an image in the iconic photograph of the event which arguably resembles Dr. King is an insult, but rather a free-flowing expression of once again honoring his belief in that event and his encouragement and support of the marchers.

Here's another image from the photo, blown up a little too much and colored to see the contrast and draw it out more. And this one, like the rest, is looking down upon the marchers.

This image isn't as clear as most of the others, but I have to keep reminded myself when I post these that this is from one single photograph, snapped in one moment of time which captured the fast-moving turbulent clouds at the exact point where all of these faces were present - some of them very clearly present once you see their photogenic appearance. This one, if we are to go along with the theme of people related to voting rights, could be labeled as being anyone from Thomas Jefferson to any number of the women working in the suffrage movement:

Re. the post above this one, maybe its Susan B. Anthony (nickname Sue B. Tony?). She'd enjoy this cloud. And look at the cost of an American stamp in 1936. Stamps are one of the leading indicators of the value of American money, and this shows that a buck isn't worth a nickel. That's my three cents anyway.