Photo of a Bigfoot Kill?

I thought I'd share what has become my most viewed video today. I won't say most popular because it has in fact attracted the most numbers of dislikes, and some of the most acerbic comments I have read on any of my videos. In fact, this video is the main reason I simply turned off the comments of all my videos.

With over 130,000 views to date I have some interesting stats to glean from its record, as well as the ability to quantify some of my opinions regarding the Bigfoot community at large. For instance, the video is nineteen minutes long, but the average minutes per view is only 2.9 minutes. that means a ton of people have clicked onto it, only to realize that while the photo analyzed in the video is not really a Bigfoot kill. Duh, you think maybe? Common sense says that if there were ever to be a legitimate Bigfoot killing, it would be plastered all over the front pages and the evening news.

So why do we keep going to these videos expecting to see a real dead Bigfoot? Well, that gets us embroiled into a sticky situation that will just piss people off because no one likes to be wrong. That would be like bringing up a study that was done a while back that showed that the majority of people that believed in things like UFO's, government conspiracies, alien abductions and yes, Bigfoot, were all people of what are commonly termed, lower ability.

But I guess that's neither here nor there. There is a lot of crap on the internet that isn't true, and yet we continue to get suckered into clicking onto link after link, only to be disappointed with the product offered us on the other side. So what does this video have to do with all that?

Well, it is an example of the classic situation of fooling some of the people some of the time paradigm. Yeah, it's a little bit on the mystical side here, so lets delve into a little backstory of the video here.

About a year ago I got a message from somebody regarding this picture, and wanted to know if I knew the story behind it. (And no, I'm not going to name names here, so stop wondering who.) I did not know the story behind it, but I had seen it before and already knew that while it looked historical, it was obviously a fake photo.

The advent of editing software has birthed a plethora of hoax minded individuals who seem to thing that changing reality around a tad is a fun thing to do. And I don't really have a problem with that, provided the hoax is presented on the right type of platform, and done in a way that people are not so easily taken in on the hoax.

A couple of publications here come to mind as examples. One of them is the Weekly World News. Interesting rag that it is, there is no real news about it. Well, almost none. Once an incredibly newsstand product, the WWN has become just another seedy online sideshow, still disseminating the same old hoaxes packaged as real news. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that buy into these faux articles hook line and sinker. These unfortunate souls really believe what comes out of WWN is true news.

Another site, which I personally find rather disgusting, is the Ringsider Report. But at least these clowns don't attempt to deceive people into believing the crap they post is real news. They publish their stories as though it were real news, but reading the stuff they sell is enough to convince all but the numbest among us that it is pure garbage. But still people read on.

But lets get back to the video. The picture of this Bigfoot kill has been around for quite a while, and every so often gets the joy of having some hack hoaxer latching onto it and presenting it as some kind of a new historical find. Yeah, right. Except that there are a few facts that really makes me ashamed that as a group of people, we allow these jokers to continue on with hoax after hoax. What's worse is that there are more and more of us that buy into the hoaxes, hoax after hoax.

This particular photo I look at was actually done as an entry to a photoshopping contest, and as such, and in the context presented, I do not consider the photograph itself as a hoax. It is actually a historical photograph of some hunters with a deer kill. The deer was expertly removed from the picture, and a composite of some other images were inserted in such a way as to present what the editor though a dead Bigfoot would look like.

A quick casual glance at the photo doesn't reveal that it is an edited photo. However, anything longer than a quick glance immediately begins to reveal flaw after flaw, showing itself to be the false image that was created in the eyes of the beholder. But enough of all that. Let's move on to the video...

The Bigfoot face Syndrome

This will be the last of my Bigfoot how-to photography series. I find myself tempted to drift far too distant from my core mission of sharing Bigfoot Tales and hunts. I'm not an instructor, never have been, and have no desire to be one. So, before I get too deeply immersed in what is wrong with Bigfoot research and photographic evidence, I'll leave you with this video I did on what I call the Bigfoot Face Syndrome.

This is an ailment that all Sasquatch hunters suffer from, some to a greater degree than others, mind you, but we all suffer from it. This ailment becomes detrimental when we let it control our research activities. Why? Because instead of looking for the truth, we allow ourselves to become dependent upon the tendency we have to cherry pick the data in front of us and choose what suits our desires.

In short, we see Bigfoot when there isn't any, and todays digital cameras only exacerbate the situation. In the following video, I share a face in the woods that I came across one day. It looked pretty cool when I first laid eyes upon it, and I could have simply kept the image and shared it as a possible Bigfoot image.

But I resisted the temptation to satisfy my urge to share my findings in favor of my deeply seated need to know the truth of the matter. I examined the situation carefully, and discovered that there was no face, only the forest. The face was fabricated in the camera by its ability to discern facial features. It is actually a pretty cool piece of video, and I hope you do learn something valuable from it.

Enjoy the video, and don't forget to subscribe!

http://youtu.be/HVOmjRwim00

Bigfoot Faces in the Dark; part 4

In the last installment of this series, we looked at a couple of the terms that relate to our subconscious ability to see things that are not there when we are out searching for the elusive one. This is one of the greatest obstacles to providing effective data in our search for this creature we call Bigfoot. In some ways, we could even go so far as to say that our earnest desire is actually crippling our efforts to a great degree.

If you have been hooked on Bigfoot for any length of time, and if you are reading this, you are hooked on Bigfoot, then you will likely have seen hundreds if not thousands of photographs and videos presented by people that claim that their particular photo or video is the proof positive shot of the truth, the image that proves Bigfoot exists.

But there really isn't anything there to see. It's just a picture of trees and shadows dotted with occasional flashes of light. Don't get me wrong here, I am not saying all Bigfoot photos are made of the stuff we call imagination. I have seen plenty of good images that depict what we call Bigfoot today. There are some good photographic and video evidence that are more than compelling. But we'll get to those at some other time.

What I am saying here is that more often than not, the Bigfoot we see are mere reflections of our imagination. We see something moving in the woods, and because we so badly want to see this thing we call Bigfoot that whatever is really there becomes this creature. So, for my second piece of advice here, (my first was to try to buy a camera with an optical viewfinder), I strongly suggest that you learn to keep your imagination in check at all times.

 A  lot of people go into the woods and call themselves Bigfoot researchers, but are they really researchers? Not really. That would be like a casual birdwatcher calling themselves an ornithologist, in a way. You are not really researching if you are just blindly walking around hoping to stumble upon some valuable piece of evidence.

When it comes to the photographic or visual component of data, we very often make some fatal errors when we examine the picture in front of us. One component is the three dimensional, or 3D aspect of what we are looking at. When we look at the real world, we are viewing it in three dimension; width, height, and depth. However, when we look at a reproduced image, we are only looking at two dimensions, width and height.

Granted, there are cameras today that can provide us with a stereoscopic image that we call 3D, but how many photos have you seen of Bigfoot that were made with one of those cameras? I'm guessing probably none. Therefore, when we look at one of these images, whether it be a photo or a video, we are looking at a reproduction of what someone else saw, but it is missing that third dimension of depth.

Because we can only see images in two dimensions, we are not seeing what the person who took and shared the image with us, exactly. Things look flat, in a way. However, this causes us to see the image in a different way than someone who was actually there, and we can easily dismiss what we are seeing as a hoaxed photo, or chalk the image up to a fantastic imagination.

Those of us that take these pictures and share them with the result of insult and humiliation getting tossed back at us, often become discouraged and more often than not fade into the background of the Bigfoot world, if not simply exit the arena stage left. That's too bad, because many of these pictures actually do contain images of Bigfoot, even though most people cannot see them for what they are.

In the next installment we'll talk about the Bigfoot face syndrome, and how we can change the way we take and present these images in ways that will make them more appealing, agreeable, and better evidence in our search for Bigfoot.

Bigfoot Faces in the Dark; part 3

In part two I discussed a bit about the new wave of cameras that hit the market allowing people to take better snapshots with less skill needed. This tool loaded onto almost all, if not all, cameras manufactured today. Marketing is the driving factor, and since most people buy cameras simply to take candid shots of friends and family under many different occasions, the people part of the photography world is a main selling tactic. Better people shots means more buyers for your camera.

The end result is of course that instead of making people take the time to learn the art of composition and clarity in photography, all they have to do is push a button and the camera does the work for them. It is great for wedding parties and the baby shower, but for Bigfoot hunting, it causes no end of problems.

Time and time again we look at the digital image on the back of our camera body and are certain we are looking at a Bigfoot. The reality is of course that what we are really observing is a composite image that has been created by the software in the camera of light and dark spaces, lines and dots that it thinks is a face. Since we are looking for a Bigfoot, we think that image is a Bigfoot. If we were looking for Lizard Man, we would think it was a Lizard man. The same rule would go far any sort of anthropomorphic creature we were looking for. If it has a face, then that is what we see in the camera view screen.

The lesson here is that when it comes to equipment, whether that would be a video camera or a still camera, we really should be looking for a camera that has an optical view finder as opposed to strictly a digital screen for setting up our shots. This eliminates that tendency to over-trust the image we are looking at because what we are looking at is the real thing, and not simply that composite image created for us by the camera.

We will still see faces in the shadows of course, because our brains also come with facial recognition software installed by the manufacturer. This is where a couple of terms come into play for we Bigfoot hunters. these two terms are pareidolia and simulacra. They sound rather brainy, and in a sense they are, but they help to explain why we see the things that we see, that really aren't.

Of the two terms, pareidolia is the most used. Unfortunately it is frequently misused, misunderstood, and overused. The term has been around for ages, but for those of us in the Bigfoot genre, it came into popular use after it was used by Ranae Holland in an episode of the hit TV show, Finding Bigfoot. As in many areas of popular followings, whenever a so-called expert emits a fancy term, the adorants of the hero figure latch onto the word and use it unceasingly because it fills a vacuum in their vocabulary. Eventually the term gets worn out and falls into disuse for the most part.

So what is pareidolia? Simply put, and I won't launch into a detailed explanation here, pareidolia is the unconscious act of our minds combining various features into what we perceive to be facial, or other, characteristics. In other words, facial recognition software. We so desperately want to find a Bigfoot that we subconsciously create a Bigfoot out of thin air, sort of, to satisfy that need. We create our own optical illusions to satisfy a need. Where this term gets overused is when we look at a digital image and see these images that others can see.

This is where simulacra comes into play. Pareidolia is entirely from our minds, and has no physical representation in the real world. Simulacra, on the other hand, is a physical manifestation of those images that can in fact be reproduced for others to see, even without direction. Sometimes the image is too subtle for others to see, and become critical of the image. You can take a picture of a particular image that you know beyond any reasonable doubt is a Bigfoot, but nobody else can see it. Why is that.

Well, there are a few reasons for that, and the most common reason is that there really is nothing there to see. There is no Bigfoot in the image. But you know it was there. Pareidolia is driven by our imagination, and sometimes the need to see a Bigfoot will make us see a Bigfoot when nothing is there. We believe it in our minds so strongly that nothing can deter us from our claims.

Very often, someone else has presented a picture or video of what they claim is a bigfoot, but also is a picture of nothing but the forest. That same desire drives us to see what is not there, even though we did not see it in real life, and there really is no Bigfoot in the image in front of us. How do we correct that situation that we seem to get ourselves into so often.

The best way is to make certain of what we see. If you see a Bigfoot in your cameras view screen, then you should also see it when not looking through the view screen. If you can see it in your screen, but not with your naked eye, then you are probably not seeing a Bigfoot. You are seeing a simulacra, a simulated image, and others quite likely will not be able to see a Bigfoot when you show them the picture or video.

This problem also rests in our ability to view things in a three dimensional format. Normal cameras can only perceive and capture two dimensions, width and height, but we humans can also perceive depth of an image as well. I have seen very few purported Bigfoot images that contain all three possible attributes, but there are a few out there.

Next time we'll get into a little bit more about 3D images and how that can work to help you take a valid Bigfoot picture that you can share with others.

Bigfoot Faces in the Dark: part 2

Last time I started talk about the differences between digital imagery and celluloid or film imagery, and why digital evidence can be a bad thing in your hunt for Bigfoot. When you take a picture with an old style film camera, what you see is what you get, but in a digital camera, you get oh so much more.

Older cameras rely entirely on optics for an image, but newer digital cameras actually have software that can enhance what you see. That is pretty cool, but the drawback is that it can lead you to believe that something is there, when it isn't. Take this picture I posted last time for instance.

 

 

This is a bit blurry, but understandable when you consider how enlarged it is from the original shot. It is a shot taken from a long distance of an area where I though I could sense something. I could not see anything with the naked eye, so I looked through my camera's viewfinder. I could see what I thought was a whatever, but when I got over to the place I took the photo of, there was nothing there. Naturally. Happens all the time in Bigfooting.

 

So, as we all do, I took a closer look at home, and upon examining it thoroughly, declared this to be an image of a medieval soldier. Yah, right. A medieval in the backwoods of 21st century Maine. Take a look at this image with the requisite redlines and all.

 

 

It kinda does look like a helmeted foot soldier with a pike and all. Was it really there? Of course not. However, the old adage states that the camera doesn't lie. That might have been true in the old days, but not any more. Today's digital camera's are expert liars.

Software manufacturers need to sell software, and so they develop software to sell to camera manufacturers who also need to sell cameras. And the cameras that sell, are also the cameras that people want. And people want cameras that take great pictures, without a lot of work going into the effort on their part.

Of course,  I'm talking about consumer grade cameras here, not the higher end prosumer and pro models. These would be the DSLR's and other cameras that capture images digitally, but use high quality optics for visual targeting and focusing.

Here is the problem with today's digital cameras and why so many people can see a Bigfoot that isn't; facial recognition software. Now, I have posted this fact on several forums with a lot of negative feedback from many of the members of those forum members. The fact is, sadly, that many people would rather comfortably rest on a lie as opposed to putting some hard labor into the truth.  The facial recognition software that is in these cameras, is not the same the facial recognition software that governments use to keep tabs on us.

Nevertheless, the detractors of my point don't care about facts, so to them I say; have a good day, and goodbye. To the rest of the community, I say; take a moment and learn something new. Here is how this software works: The software contains a set of predetermined parameters that are programmed to read various signals that may indicate the features of a persons face. Then it directs the cameras focusing mechanism to focus in on that specific point of the image to develop that perceived facial feature, while ignoring the rest of the image.

In a nutshell, if a set of shadows and highlights fall together in the right pattern, your camera will show you what it thinks is a person. It doesn't matter if there is a person there or not, what matters is if the camera thinks there is a person. My advice to you is that if you really want to take pictures of Bigfoot, if your camera has this facial recognition ability, try to turn it off.

Usually, this is a basic component of the autofocus function, and you will need to disable it. However, many cameras today also have various preset settings that you can also use that will disable this facial recognition software, such as scenic view or distant view. There are many names for these various settings, and the autofocus parameters will give you a different focus perspective, but at least you will not be seeing Bigfoot faces in the shadows. Maybe.

There are some other aspects that also need to be covered here, such as the terms pareidolia and simulacra, and we'll get into these phenomenon next time.