1. The photos are not genuine and this is certified by Greg Pocha. For them to be genuine, they had to be the exact files from the camera. They were further saved, and so their genuineness is gone. Pocha assumes he doesn't know what type of change they have, but admits without explaining why that the pictures might have just been resized...
This is interesting. I thought Greg Pocha was one of the experts that had "certified" the pictures as not being faked, based on the news reports where the claim of expert inspection is made, and that he's one expert frequently named. Although his claim should probably be dismissed if he can't provide any concrete reason ("That which is asserted without evidence.....") it might be useful to see his claim, particularly if he's had access to images that aren't filtered through social media. Can you provide a link please?
2. Locating the spot doesn't prove the photos are genuine either. This is a fallacious argument well known to philosophers as modus tollens. If the photos are genuine, the location can be verified. This is valid of course. Then you verify the location and affirm the photo is genuine, something unwarranted by the premise, which only guarantees that the location can be verified provided the photo is genuine in the first instance.
If someone owns a Rolls Royce, he or she is rich.
Bill Gates is rich. Then, he owns a Rolls Royce.
I think this example makes it clear, even if I don't know if Bill owns a Rolls...[/
Maybe I've missed some posts, but wasn't it
you that raised the issue of locating the spot, seemingly as evidence that the photos could be fake? In that case it wasn't that the spot couldn't be located, it was that you couldn't locate it.
Evidence that the spot exists on that route doesn't make the photos genuine, but it does add to the evidence that they may be, not least by negating the false claim/innuendo that they must be fake because the location doesn't exist. There's nothing fallacious about that.
3. It seems likely that the camera settings were wrong, at least for the time. Maybe also for the date. Melissa told that she could recognize the location from the reflex on the lenses, something amazing. This plus a wrong date would help a wrong association. I don't think this is critical unless she had changed the date, but in this case why should she change the time? Even if she had changed the date, what for? She wouldn't need the picture to be month-old or to be driving to a pageant for credibility. However, accepting a wrong date might help forgetting about a child in a car on a different occasion...
I'm not sure recognising the location is "amazing", certainly not if that's a route she's travelled fairly frequently.
For my two'penneth... There was a girl with them in the car, possibly one of the grandkids she says regularly accompany them to pageants. She saw the picture and assumed it was a boy, knew there was no boy in the car, so jumped straight to "Spook!". The story got wider coverage so she had no choice to continue with it, plus she may like the publicity.
Obviously, deliberately faking is also an option but I'm using Hanlon's razor as a corollary to Occam's. Photoshop'd photos are possible but I think unlikely, due to it being far easier to stage real photos, and the "shoulder" in the before image would be an illogical addition.
Just my opinion
Ray Von