Calvine UFO Photo - Reflection In Water Hypothesis

jarlrmai said:
Surely man in a rowboat means ripples on the loch which means a glassy still lake surface perfectly reflecting sky is an impossibility?
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Looks like ripples behind the boat would be reasonably expected. I am not sure we have enough resolution to see effects of small ripples in the relatively featureless area behind the boat. I would not expect ripples from a rowboat to have any effect on the reflection of an island in the distance, and somewhat ahead of the boat. If we had pictures of the "rowboat" after it passed the "island," that would tell us more, maybe. But we do not.

I am not arguing for the rowboat hypothesis, I'm just not sure the absence of visible ripple effects says much one way or another.
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I think we're at the point where the reflection theory (in general) has been shown to be both feasible and flawed, and some think it's likely and some don't.

"Man in a boat" is probably less likely but potentially not impossible, and again some think it might be that and some don't.

Of course, we mustn't forget that man in a boat almost certainly would be impossible if the other five photos were as described by people who say they saw them.

But, in any case, what more's to be said? It's possible. There's no consensus. It could maybe be proven if the exact spot was found and the shot was recreated, and maybe disproven if the other five photos turned up.

In the absence of either of those two things I wonder if, for the time being, reflection theory might have run its course?
 
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deirdre said:
the trees are further away? trees are always blurrier than sharp objects due to lots of little leaves? (the trees are blurrier in every reflection pic i have..and i have like 50+ in my folder.

or...see this canal pic. the edge of bridge whichis where the camera seems to be zeroed in on is clearer. is it clearer because everything else in the photo is further away? or just because the leaves are smaller so give the illusion of blurrier?

View attachment 54166
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Leaves blow in a very slight breeze, remember?
 
Rory said:
There's no consensus. It could maybe be proven if the exact spot was found and the shot was recreated, and maybe disproven if the other five photos turned up.

In the absence of either of those two things I wonder if it might have run its course?
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the point is to show (or disprove) that other possibilities are possible. vs an ETUFO or an anti-grav stealth machine. not to have the whole internet come to a consensus.
 
deirdre said:
the point is to show (or disprove) that other possibilities are possible. vs an ETUFO or an anti-grav stealth machine.
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Exactly. And we've done that.

deirdre said:
not to have the whole internet come to a consensus.
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I didn't mean the whole internet, I meant people here (also don't think we need to, just saying that the fact we haven't is one way that shows the reflection theory is far from proven, nor is it apparently leading the suggestions for "most likely" way the photo could have been hoaxed).

deirdre said:
small and stagnant like that?
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Probably any type you want: even ones that are pretty with houseboats and towpaths and history maybe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_canals_in_the_United_States
 
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Rory said:
(also don't think we need to, just saying that the fact we haven't is one factor that shows it's not proven or even suggested as "most likely").
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it's most likely a hoax.
i don't think people agreeing that there are multiple ways to fake a super crappy ufo picture, is a bad thing.
 
Rory said:
I know people aren't a fan of colorization - and with good reason - but it may be helpful with regard to the whole "man in a boat" thing (as well contrast enhancing). To me, both show that what we're looking at is sky.

View attachment 54164

I think "man in a boat" is simply pareidolia.
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Not sure what you're trying to do here. You've clearly changed the photo, adding information, in a way that would change how it could possibly be interpreted. If you add sky colours, then sure it's more likely to be sky. But the areas you've made sky-colour just look like more clouds/fog to me. You could probably equally well colour the lower part to look more like water if you wanted to dictate the interpretation.
 
jarlrmai said:
Surely man in a rowboat means ripples on the loch which means a glassy still lake surface perfectly reflecting sky is an impossibility?
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Ann K said:
No, it's a good argument against the "man in a boat" theory. ;)
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Surely one small person in a rowboat on a large lake is not going to cause much disturbance to the water across the whole lake, especially in front of the rower in the distance? Don't know why everyone's agreeing over that.

Any ripples in front of the more distance island would be very small, and impossible to detect at that distance in a blurry photo.

It could even be that the person has been stopped for a while to fish. Or he may have stopped, and now is rowing again but the new ripples haven't reached far yet.

I don't know what it is, but this isn't an argument against the rowboat theory.
 
deirdre said:
except in this case the MOD had 6 negatives to study. the man in the boat assumes the MOD is grossly incompetent. or that little man in the row boat/kayak is rowing his heart out all over the lake area. which is possible... we dont know how far apart the pics were taken. still it's exhausting thinking about. Although looking up college rowing teams in Scotland might help pinpoint the location.
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I don't place much faith in evidence that we hear about but can't see. We're always hearing about how much better the secret hidden evidence is, but I don't think we can judge it till we see it.

Remember the 3 leaked UFO videos that triggered this whole recent interest? Mundane explanations have been found for all of them, but what if we'd only heard about these "amazing" videos from "people in the know", without ever actually seeing them? We'd hear that it was clear evidence of alien craft going faster than any human craft can, defying the laws of physics etc. Yet we see them and it's none of that.

So no, I place no faith in what we hear about hidden evidence. It could be that this is the only photo where the thing looks like a plane, and in the others it's a less recognisable blob, but they presume it's a plane because they saw it as a plane in this one photo. We also don't know where the plane moves to without seeing the other photos. And does the UFO move? We don't know. Also there's no other points of reference, so we may not be able to tell if something had moved anyway. The rowboat could have just slowly drifted past the island over an hour or something. Maybe the guy's fallen asleep out there and would be hunched in the same pose in multiple places, still looking like a plane.

Maybe maybe maybe, but that's the point. We have no information from those other photos, no matter what they say, unless we can see them.
 
Robert Webb said:
We're always hearing about how much better the secret hidden evidence is
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In this case this is supposed to be the best shot. Though the one that supposedly has two planes in it would be useful.

Robert Webb said:
Oh OK. Well AI doesn't know what the blurry photo is either.
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You don't think it's interesting that without any input it's colored it like sky, and even has a bit of pink in it, which is what we might expect in a photo taken twenty minutes before sunset? And that it now looks even less like a reflection?

It could be wrong, but it could also be right enough to help us see more clearly what was actually there. To me it doesn't seem an unreasonable interpretation. But I understand it's not for everyone.
 
Rory said:
You don't think it's interesting that without any input it's colored it like sky, and even has a bit of pink in it, which is what we might expect in a photo taken twenty minutes before sunset? And that it now looks even less like a reflection?
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That's the point, that adding the color changes the way it looks. And since we don't know what it is, we have no way of knowing if AI got it right. If people can be fooled, so can AI, and since a number of people here think it's water and a number of people think it's sky, it seems fair to assume that one group or the other is being fooled.

That's apart from the indisputable fact that a pink sky would cast a pink reflection...
 
Robert Webb said:
So no, I place no faith in what we hear about hidden evidence. It could be that this is the only photo where the thing looks like a plane, and in the others it's a less recognisable blob, but they presume it's a plane because they saw it as a plane in this one photo.
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The person claiming to have seen all 6 negatives was additionally a UFO buff and was told this was a UFO, so he saw the thing as a UFO (large, distant, airborne, hi-tech or alien). We also don't know if his memory of the negatives being much clearer is just info his brain has filled in over time - and then being confronted by the blurry photo he feels like what he saw was much more detailed.
 
Regarding those that argue that "wouldn't we see ripples" if the plane were a boat, I don't think that you would expect to see the same kind of easily visible ripples seen in images of boats that have been posted. There is great difference in photo quality of these images, that would affect the visibility of ripples, not to mention the very different properties of what is being reflected.

Just reducing the boat in the image below to roughly the width of the plane in the Calvine photo makes the ripples from JMartJr's image (left most small sub-image) harder to see. When I added a small amount of blur in Photoshop (Gausian blur of 1.0), to mimic the fuzziness of the photo in the OP (middle sub-image), the ripples almost disappear. To get the contrast similar to that of the Calvine photo, I adjusted the levels to increase the black level and the ripples are pretty much gone.
Man in boat comparison.jpg


This doesn't even address the differences in what is being reflected, which in the case of the boat photo above is a high contrast mix of blue sky and white cloud, with clearly visible sunrise/sunset directional lighting, plus high mountains all around, contrasting strongly against the sky.

Whereas the Calvine photo shows a sky (assuming that it is a sky) that is much lower contrast, has much less variation in brightness, no distinct structures and is basically a fuzzy gradient from top left, to bottom right.

With that kind of reflection and the low quality and small size of the "man in the boat", if that man was rowing full pelt, then I doubt that any ripples would be visible.

For a cloudy sky comparison, here is a photo I took of a small boat that's very large in the frame, on a lake, under a sky of heavy cloud. There is rippling visible, but it's not particularly pronounced, even at this size. Reducing that boat down to the size of the Calvine plane (uppermost cutout image below the Calvine object) and the ripples have gone, even before adding a small blur (the lower cutout image).
men in boat cloudy.jpg


One last point is that just because there is a man in a boat, that doesn't mean that the boat is in motion and causing ripples, for example if the person in the boat was fishing.
 
Man in a boat is possible I suppose, but the comparison above doesn't look much like a plane. It seems highly coincidental that the photo was snapped at an exact moment where a fisherman was posed such that he and his boat looked indistinguishable from a plane.
 
Don't we also still have to find the lake with the specifically shaped island? If it was a rowing boat, it cannot be a puddle anymore. Where is this lake?
 
Ravi said:
Don't we also still have to find the lake with the specifically shaped island? If it was a rowing boat, it cannot be a puddle anymore. Where is this lake?
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Where's the water? Where was the photographer standing? What's the water height in our putative lake, compared to today? What's the visible effect of thirty years of vegetation growth if it were an island? What's the size of the object?

We don't know a single one of those factors. So if we don't know where to look and we don't know what we're looking for, and there are literally thousands of waterside views within a very few miles of the Pitlochry-to-Calvine line, good luck!

I'll throw in the fact that there seem to have been other photos with more than one visible plane, so the "rowboat" hypothesis is very shaky. That still doesn't mean we've eliminated the reflection concept. It seems to me that it's got to be far more likely than an enormous hovering unidentified object that nobody else, including pilots, saw at all.
 
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Ann K said:
Where's the water? Where was the photographer standing? What's the water height in our putative lake, compared to today? What's the visible effect of thirty years of vegetation growth if it were an island? What's the size of the object?

We don't know a single one of those factors. So if we don't know where to look and we don't know what we're looking for, and there are literally thousands of waterside views within a very few miles of the Pitlochry-to-Calvine line, good luck!

I'll throw in the fact that there seem to have been other photos with more than one visible plane, so the "rowboat" hypothesis is very shaky. That still doesn't mean we've eliminated the reflection concept. It seems to me that it's got to be far more likely than an enormous hovering unidentified object that nobody else, including pilots, saw at all.
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Well, some here have found more difficult things based on only a photo. :)

I'm not saying I think it can be found though. Not because it is hard, but because I believe it does not exist.
 
Ravi said:
Well, some here have found more difficult things based on only a photo. :)

I'm not saying I think it can be found though. Not because it is hard, but because I believe it does not exist.
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Fair enough, but I'll resubmit the scenario of the holiday workers coming upon a pond. First, a lake you do not fence up, but you might a small soft-sided water "hole", keep animals such as cattle & sheep from falling in., unable to get out. This pond could be on the rise too, and not valley level. This is where the workers were, possibly of course.

I'll also restate they were startled by the typical low flights of 1 or 2 RAF jets as they're want to do. Omni-blurred because out of focus, as the oh-so organic craft should be, otherwise they'd both share in the infinity range.
Trying to make elevated pond litter a notable " island", and the reflected jet a "man rowing", has resulted in a greater struggle of illusion.

Sorry for latent comment, I'll get back because I think there's more reflective evidence, and present screen and best photo not immediately at hand.
 
Rory said:
To me it doesn't seem an unreasonable interpretation.
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Nor to me, but I am not sure I see any reason to prefer it to other interpretations.

Henkka said:
It seems highly coincidental that the photo was snapped at an exact moment where a fisherman was posed such that he and his boat looked indistinguishable from a plane.
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Does that work both ways? That a plane was photographed in just such an angle and resolution to look like a rowboat -- equally unlikely?
 
Rory said:
Literally thousands?
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views. not water areas.
every rock looks different from every different view. my perfect rock at Pitlochry dam looks just like a turtle from the top of the dam. it looks more like a triangle from 20 feet down the walkway and it looks like a blob from the grass barb wire fence side. that is 4 views right there.
 
deirdre said:
views. not water areas.
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Sure, I get that. But Ann was talking in the context of places where there would be a large enough island to make a boat look that small, so there's a minimum quantity of water we're talking about there and I don't see too many of those that fit that criterion.

(Not that she was supporting island/boat, just discussing it.)
 
Rory said:
Literally thousands?
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Loch Tummel alone has about 17 miles of shoreline, making for a hell of a lot of places to stand and see the water. (Sorry, I don't know the proper coefficient to compute "rocks per mile". :D) There are other lochs, a couple of large reservoirs, and goodness knows how many smaller farm ponds, and I'm not even considering all the rivers and streams in the vicinity, but the area is full of them.


Regarding your other comment, no, I'm not using the context of "size compared to a rowboat". I think the presence of other photos showing multiple plane images pretty well knocks the rowboat hypothesis out of contention.
 
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JMartJr said:
Does that work both ways? That a plane was photographed in just such an angle and resolution to look like a rowboat -- equally unlikely?
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Um, I don't think it looks like rowboat, though… It looks like a plane, or maybe a bird. It could be a rowboat, but it would be very coincidental for it to look so much like a plane. I think if you showed the photo to a 100 people and asked them what it was, the vast majority would say it's a plane. It only looks like a rowboat to people who are racking their brains for what else it could be. But still, it could be a rowboat, I'm not denying that.

Btw if anyone's wondering, I'm not like a UFO guy, I'm agnostic / ambivalent on the topic. Fun to think about sometimes, though.
 
Henkka said:
Um, I don't think it looks like rowboat, though… It looks like a plane, or maybe a bird.
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Sure, but how much of that comes from the context of "Here is a UFO picture, of something in the sky, where planes and birds live?"

Henkka said:
It could be a rowboat, but it would be very coincidental for it to look so much like a plane. I think if you showed the photo to a 100 people and asked them what it was, the vast majority would say it's a plane.
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Possibly. If you removed the context, I suspect fewer of them would, but I don't know that. If you said "Here's a picture of an island in a lake, what do you think that is next to it?" I wonder how many "It's a rowboat" answers you'd get.
 
Ravi said:
Don't we also still have to find the lake with the specifically shaped island? If it was a rowing boat, it cannot be a puddle anymore. Where is this lake?
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That would be nice, but even if rowboat is right we can't even tell for sure that it's an island. We could be looking at the end of a small peninsula. The rest hidden behind the "island" and then disappearing into the fog.

Also, is anyone out there actively looking for this place? Do we even have concrete knowledge of where the photo was taken within some bounds?
 
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