REOPEN KENNEDY CASE

Greg at September 22, 2015 at 6:34 PM

G,

I'll stand corrected on this, because it's only a vague memory of reading about it once before, but I think a sharper image is needed.

But then, if we had a sharper image, we probably wouldn't need the software. The value of the software would be in matching an image to one in a database where the individual is unknown and no other clues exist to identify them.

Sharper image and even then not accurate. Take for example Passport Photos and electronic scans for facial recognition..they are hit and miss, we desperately need a clearer scan........

I have so far had no luck and have had people spend hours trying to unlock the pixels of the HD image of PM in Darnell, its proving extremely difficult....all agreed if we can obtain anything slightly better than we have we are a chance.....

looking looking.....

More pixels or better algorithms, then, as I suspected. Thanks for looking!!

I am not sure if its been suggested before and I apologise if it has, but has anyone tried to contact Robert Groden about better scans? It might be worthwhile.

I have been working on the problem of PM's appearance for a while. I am slow as the work is demanding and it unfortunately clashes with my job quite a lot. There are long weeks during which I make almost no progress. I am attaching a picture which shows a 3D reconstruction of the doorway in SketchupPro. The doorway was embedded into a model of TSBD, and the whole object was placed carefully into a proper location of Dealey Plaza in GoogleEarth. The time was set to 12.30, November 22, and so the shadows should match exactly the reality on that fateful Friday. The point is that PM's body was indeed in the dark shadow, however, his right hand was just outside the shadow plane. I have placed a bottle into PM's right hand since I believe it held a bottle. However, the back of the right hand would create a similar shining effect. The model is not rendered yet which means it looks like  it was sketched by hand, and objects are not reflecting the sun light. 

I see my picture is not showing in the message, please advise. The icon on top of the efit box prompted for an URL.  I first placed the picture into one of ROKC albums, and used the link shown in my browser. 

http://www.reopenkennedycase.org/apps/photos/photo?photoid=199799615

Nice work. And a gooc use of technology.

Andrej, can you plz delete the pic in that folder and upload it to the TSBD exterior folder or PM folder .

Thx.

Furthermore I think that the shadow is rather short angle wise, but I could be mistaken.

Have a look here for the sun's position and also the attached 

http://www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~mmd/shadows.html

and

Thanks, Barto, for your recommendation re. picture location. I have placed it to TSBD exterior.

http://www.reopenkennedycase.org/apps/photos/photo/add?galleryid=12137145&albumid=15911490

I have compared the shadow angles in my model, both azimuth and elevation, visually with several pictures, such as Altgens6 or some Allen's pictures. The fit with Altgens6 was very good, however, this refers more or less only to elevation. Allen's pictures are not directly comparable with my model as they were taken some 20min+ after 12.30 CET. I can reproduce Allen's shadows if I add 25-30 min. to my model. From the article you kindly linked I see that the year also matters, not only the calendar day and hour, which is something not implemented in SketchupPro. This will require an evaluation of a possible effect of years on azimuth. I will look into it. 

... And this should be the corect link to the PM standing in the shadow.

http://www.reopenkennedycase.org/apps/photos/album?albumid=15864860

Andrej Stancak at September 24, 2015 at 8:22 AM

... And this should be the corect link to the PM standing in the shadow.

http://www.reopenkennedycase.org/apps/photos/album?albumid=15864860

Hello Andrej,

PMs position in relation to shadows has been a topic of concern for sometime.  Your use of 3D software to mockup the entrance could be a valuable addition.

I agree with Barto that the west wall shadow on your image looks to be a tad slim.

A few observations and items that may be of use to you:

-  There are two sets of shadows to take into account.  The shadow of the West Wall of the Entrance, and the shadow cast by the roof of the entrance.   

- solar calculator shows Sun azimuth of 184.9° and altitude of 37° at 12:30 in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/63.

- obviously having the correct dimensions of the Entrance alcove and the placement of PM are essential to determine his position in relation to shadow lines.

- Allen began shooting photos before 12:40 near the Grassy knoll.  Around 12:42-43 he begins taking pictures of the crowd and police at the Entrance to the TSBD.

- Murray also has a good photo showing the shadow of the entrance roof cast on the East Wall of the Entrance in one of his photos taken right around 12:40-45.

Good luck with your project.

Terry Martin at September 24, 2015 at 6:06 AM

Nice work. And a gooc use of technology.

Thanks, Terry, I will make sure this Forum is informed when I make some palpable progress. Naturally, the main task remains to reveal the identity of PM.

Richard Hocking at September 24, 2015 at 10:01 AM

Andrej Stancak at September 24, 2015 at 8:22 AM

... And this should be the corect link to the PM standing in the shadow.

http://www.reopenkennedycase.org/apps/photos/album?albumid=15864860

Hello Andrej,

PMs position in relation to shadows has been a topic of concern for sometime.  Your use of 3D software to mockup the entrance could be a valuable addition.

I agree with Barto that the west wall shadow on your image looks to be a tad slim.

A few observations and items that may be of use to you:

-  There are two sets of shadows to take into account.  The shadow of the West Wall of the Entrance, and the shadow cast by the roof of the entrance.   

- solar calculator shows Sun azimuth of 184.9° and altitude of 37° at 12:30 in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/63.

- obviously having the correct dimensions of the Entrance alcove and the placement of PM are essential to determine his position in relation to shadow lines.

- Allen began shooting photos before 12:40 near the Grassy knoll.  Around 12:42-43 he begins taking pictures of the crowd and police at the Entrance to the TSBD.

- Murray also has a good photo showing the shadow of the entrance roof cast on the East Wall of the Entrance in one of his photos taken right around 12:40-45.

Good luck with your project.

Thanks, Richard, for your useful comments. I will prepare and post some pictured showing how the shadows cast by objects in front of the TSBD would match my model. That would sort out the problem whether  GoogleEarth provides accurate predictions of shadows. If so, the only next possible mistake could be committed by misrotating the whole 3D model while it is being placed onto GoogleEarth. And this is a tricky thing to do because the GoogleEarth buildings are photographed from top a and their flattened contours are wider then the size of the building itself. Naturally, one compares whether the edges of doorway are where they should be, however, a small mistake here may cause large mistakes if lines are extended to a long distance, as shadows are.

I have reviewed all TSBD images available in Robin Unger's gallery and on Mary Ferrell website and compared them with the 3D model and GoogleEarth predictions, and found a fair correspondence. However, we are all primed to see the shadow to be a bit wide-angled (reaching more to the center of the doorway)  because we only saw the doorway shadows in the post-assassination photographs Twenty minutes already shifts the shadow angle visibly. The exact time when these pictures have been taken is not known, and it clearly varies across pictures. The famous picture with three ladies on steps as they leave TSBD was taken, acccording to my model, about at 14.30. Some pictures show detectives with the rifle or chicken bag+bottle, and those pictures show nice shadows but they clearly were taken after 1PM. My point is that  the 12.30-shadows must look sharper ("narrower") than those seen in post-assassination pictures and that my verifications remainl hypothetical whatever I do.

Barto at September 24, 2015 at 6:35 AM

Andrej, can you plz delete the pic in that folder and upload it to the TSBD exterior folder or PM folder .

Thx.

Furthermore I think that the shadow is rather short angle wise, but I could be mistaken.

Have a look here for the sun's position and also the attached 

http://www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~mmd/shadows.html

and

Barto, would you please explain to me how to get my images straight into the comment window. When I click the Image icon here in the text box, it prompts for an URL. Where will I get it? Do I need to have a temporary web page or an FTP server, place my picture there, and then give this link when prompted by ROKC? Thanks for your help.

when you see the pic in the gallery, you see right below "show full size" click on that and the pic will show up in its full size in a pop up window.

Then right click and choose copy image url, and then paste that url in....et voila

You can also use this for images you have saved to your computer. It generates a URL for them
http://postimage.org/

Andrej Stancak at September 25, 2015 at 3:50 AM

Richard Hocking at September 24, 2015 at 10:01 AM

Andrej Stancak at September 24, 2015 at 8:22 AM

... And this should be the corect link to the PM standing in the shadow.

http://www.reopenkennedycase.org/apps/photos/album?albumid=15864860

Hello Andrej,

PMs position in relation to shadows has been a topic of concern for sometime.  Your use of 3D software to mockup the entrance could be a valuable addition.

I agree with Barto that the west wall shadow on your image looks to be a tad slim.

A few observations and items that may be of use to you:

-  There are two sets of shadows to take into account.  The shadow of the West Wall of the Entrance, and the shadow cast by the roof of the entrance.   

- solar calculator shows Sun azimuth of 184.9° and altitude of 37° at 12:30 in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/63.

- obviously having the correct dimensions of the Entrance alcove and the placement of PM are essential to determine his position in relation to shadow lines.

- Allen began shooting photos before 12:40 near the Grassy knoll.  Around 12:42-43 he begins taking pictures of the crowd and police at the Entrance to the TSBD.

- Murray also has a good photo showing the shadow of the entrance roof cast on the East Wall of the Entrance in one of his photos taken right around 12:40-45.

Good luck with your project.

Thanks, Richard, for your useful comments. I will prepare and post some pictured showing how the shadows cast by objects in front of the TSBD would match my model. That would sort out the problem whether  GoogleEarth provides accurate predictions of shadows. If so, the only next possible mistake could be committed by misrotating the whole 3D model while it is being placed onto GoogleEarth. And this is a tricky thing to do because the GoogleEarth buildings are photographed from top a and their flattened contours are wider then the size of the building itself. Naturally, one compares whether the edges of doorway are where they should be, however, a small mistake here may cause large mistakes if lines are extended to a long distance, as shadows are.

I have reviewed all TSBD images available in Robin Unger's gallery and on Mary Ferrell website and compared them with the 3D model and GoogleEarth predictions, and found a fair correspondence. However, we are all primed to see the shadow to be a bit wide-angled (reaching more to the center of the doorway)  because we only saw the doorway shadows in the post-assassination photographs Twenty minutes already shifts the shadow angle visibly. The exact time when these pictures have been taken is not known, and it clearly varies across pictures. The famous picture with three ladies on steps as they leave TSBD was taken, acccording to my model, about at 14.30. Some pictures show detectives with the rifle or chicken bag+bottle, and those pictures show nice shadows but they clearly were taken after 1PM. My point is that  the 12.30-shadows must look sharper ("narrower") than those seen in post-assassination pictures and that my verifications remainl hypothetical whatever I do.

Andrej,

Another very useful site for Photos is Portal to Texas History.

http://texashistory.unt.edu/

Do a search on William Allen.  It contains all of his surviving photos taken in Dealey plaza, in very high resolution.  I believe Robin Unger links to some of these photos on his site.

For a chronology of photos taken, I have used Clint Bradfords site in the past.  I believe his time stamps on some of the Allen photos to be very close.

http://www.jfk-info.com/photos1.htm

So depending on which photo you are referencing, it could be taken 10 minutes after the assassination, or as you pointed out, it could be two hours later.

In your post, you wrote,

"... My point is that the 12.30-shadows must look sharper ("narrower") than those seen in post-assassination pictures ..."

I agree with you that the shadow cast by the West Wall of the Entrance is at its "thickest" at 12:30 and becomes narrower as the the Sun continues moving Westward.  The same logic applies to the shadow cast by the ceiling of the Entrance.  Its shadow line in the Entrance is lower at 12:30 and then continues to rise as the Sun sinks gradually lower throughout the afternoon.

One of the keys for me is to look at Frazier in the Darnell stills.  We know he is standing at the edge of the porch and the first step down (as he stated in his testimony), next to the middle rail.  You can clearly see the shadow line of the Entrance ceiling across his chest.  If he were standing back 2-3 feet, in the NW corner for instance, the ceiling shadow line would be much lower on his body.

Edit to my previous post above, it should read:

".. the shadow cast by the West Wall of the Entrance is at its "thinnest" at 12:30 and becomes thicker as the the Sun continues moving Westward.. "

Apologies for the bizzaro logic.

Richard, welcome back after your long absence.

You say Frazier was standing on the first step down. Does that have any implications for Prayer Man’s actual or apparent height?

I think you said a while back that you intended to do some further work on the latter. Have you made any progress on that? Or is that possible given the many unknown variables involved?

Goban Saor at September 25, 2015 at 11:28 AM

Richard, welcome back after your long absence.

You say Frazier was standing on the first step down. Does that have any implications for Prayer Man’s actual or apparent height?

I think you said a while back that you intended to do some further work on the latter. Have you made any progress on that? Or is that possible given the many unknown variables involved?

 

Thanks Goban.

I didn't mean to imply Frazier was on the first step down.  He was actually on the top, or what I call the Porch.  I just meant he was standing right near the edge of the first step down.  It is not unusual for my writing style to confuse other people.  Sorry about that.

Most of the work I did on PM Height was done in late 2013 and early 2014.  I just need to finish going thru it, update, and make it comprehensible to other people.  Time is the key variable for me.

With PM and the other figures on the steps, I believe enough of the variables can be revealed to get a very close figure for their heights.

Richard, I have checked the shadow on the eastern wall using Allen's picture.

I hope this link works, I still am not able to place my images into the boxes, however,I realize it is my problem. back to the shadows. The linked image (in the Miscellaneous folder)  shows Allen's view of the eastern wall. The yellow lines follow the door frame and the boundary of the shadow on the easstern wall. Below is a screenshot of a 3D model of the doorway. The yellow lines have been copied from the top picture so one can check whether the shadow from Allen's picture would match the modelled shadow. There is a minute disparity between Allen's picture and model prediction as the shadow crosses the door frame, This small disparity is of no concern to me, and I think it is simply due to too much of mathematics and estimations used by complicated programs. I will prepare some more examples to validate better the appearance of shadows. Thank you for raising the issue, which helped to go to the bottom of the thing.

Richard Hocking at September 25, 2015 at 9:00 AM

Andrej Stancak at September 25, 2015 at 3:50 AM

Richard Hocking at September 24, 2015 at 10:01 AM

Andrej Stancak at September 24, 2015 at 8:22 AM

... And this should be the corect link to the PM standing in the shadow.

http://www.reopenkennedycase.org/apps/photos/album?albumid=15864860

Hello Andrej,

PMs position in relation to shadows has been a topic of concern for sometime.  Your use of 3D software to mockup the entrance could be a valuable addition.

I agree with Barto that the west wall shadow on your image looks to be a tad slim.

A few observations and items that may be of use to you:

-  There are two sets of shadows to take into account.  The shadow of the West Wall of the Entrance, and the shadow cast by the roof of the entrance.   

- solar calculator shows Sun azimuth of 184.9° and altitude of 37° at 12:30 in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/63.

- obviously having the correct dimensions of the Entrance alcove and the placement of PM are essential to determine his position in relation to shadow lines.

- Allen began shooting photos before 12:40 near the Grassy knoll.  Around 12:42-43 he begins taking pictures of the crowd and police at the Entrance to the TSBD.

- Murray also has a good photo showing the shadow of the entrance roof cast on the East Wall of the Entrance in one of his photos taken right around 12:40-45.

Good luck with your project.

Thanks, Richard, for your useful comments. I will prepare and post some pictured showing how the shadows cast by objects in front of the TSBD would match my model. That would sort out the problem whether  GoogleEarth provides accurate predictions of shadows. If so, the only next possible mistake could be committed by misrotating the whole 3D model while it is being placed onto GoogleEarth. And this is a tricky thing to do because the GoogleEarth buildings are photographed from top a and their flattened contours are wider then the size of the building itself. Naturally, one compares whether the edges of doorway are where they should be, however, a small mistake here may cause large mistakes if lines are extended to a long distance, as shadows are.

I have reviewed all TSBD images available in Robin Unger's gallery and on Mary Ferrell website and compared them with the 3D model and GoogleEarth predictions, and found a fair correspondence. However, we are all primed to see the shadow to be a bit wide-angled (reaching more to the center of the doorway)  because we only saw the doorway shadows in the post-assassination photographs Twenty minutes already shifts the shadow angle visibly. The exact time when these pictures have been taken is not known, and it clearly varies across pictures. The famous picture with three ladies on steps as they leave TSBD was taken, acccording to my model, about at 14.30. Some pictures show detectives with the rifle or chicken bag+bottle, and those pictures show nice shadows but they clearly were taken after 1PM. My point is that  the 12.30-shadows must look sharper ("narrower") than those seen in post-assassination pictures and that my verifications remainl hypothetical whatever I do.

Andrej,

Another very useful site for Photos is Portal to Texas History.

http://texashistory.unt.edu/

Do a search on William Allen.  It contains all of his surviving photos taken in Dealey plaza, in very high resolution.  I believe Robin Unger links to some of these photos on his site.

For a chronology of photos taken, I have used Clint Bradfords site in the past.  I believe his time stamps on some of the Allen photos to be very close.

http://www.jfk-info.com/photos1.htm

So depending on which photo you are referencing, it could be taken 10 minutes after the assassination, or as you pointed out, it could be two hours later.

In your post, you wrote,

"... My point is that the 12.30-shadows must look sharper ("narrower") than those seen in post-assassination pictures ..."

I agree with you that the shadow cast by the West Wall of the Entrance is at its "thickest" at 12:30 and becomes narrower as the the Sun continues moving Westward.  The same logic applies to the shadow cast by the ceiling of the Entrance.  Its shadow line in the Entrance is lower at 12:30 and then continues to rise as the Sun sinks gradually lower throughout the afternoon.

One of the keys for me is to look at Frazier in the Darnell stills.  We know he is standing at the edge of the porch and the first step down (as he stated in his testimony), next to the middle rail.  You can clearly see the shadow line of the Entrance ceiling across his chest.  If he were standing back 2-3 feet, in the NW corner for instance, the ceiling shadow line would be much lower on his body.

Richard, I am aware of BWF's claim for WC he stood on the 1st step below the top landing, however, this may not be the truth. As per his location in Darnell, Frazier stands, in my opinion  and I may be very wrong, about 60 cm (2 feet) infront of the door plane, on the top landing, the door was open, and Frazier controlled the entrance to the TSBD through the west part of the doorway. Baker must have pushed him aside to be able to get into the building, and I think he even testified about pushing few people aside while he was running into the building. A different story is whether Frazier stood at a place where we see him in Darnell also during the shooting. I think rather not but have no proof. By the way, as the door was open in Darnell, it is very likely that somebody squeezed into the building right after the shooting, Otis Williams would be the the first candidate.