Non-post

Update Friday 20Nov15: We inform readers that we won’t be posting this week. We thought best to keep the current post for another week. At least.

1. Introduction

This week our post will be a non-post. The content it will have is about a non-issue: the photo known as the last photo.

We consider that the only importance the last photo has is that it supports our theory: it was faked to show a family time that didn’t exist within a family supposed to be enjoying a week long family holiday.

The fact that holiday time didn’t exist was, in our opinion, because the parents were there to enjoy adult time with other adults and that’s how they spent most of the time that week.

We didn’t intend to post this week. Life is what life is and not what we would like it to be and much less what we want it to be and personal problems have drawn our attention away from the case.

But an anonymous posted this comment:

“Anonymous 10 Nov 2015, 17:33:00

Can I ask if you will be doing a post on the Last Photo in the near future?

I'm a bit torn. I definitely think there is something wrong with the sunglasses reflection but also think it would be very, very difficult to create a convincing composite outdoors days apart in 2007.

So I'd be really interested in your thoughts on this.

Cheers.”

This all started with an opinion, to which he’s fully entitled to have, given by Tony Bennett about our post “Sagresman”.

However, in it he wrote a passage that clearly suggests that we may have changed our minds about the last photo, and would now believe or think it credible that it could have been taken on the 29th.

This being untrue, we sought clarification by placing the following comment in the blog:

“A word to Tony Bennett. There is one thing in your post on JH Forum that we would like to clarify, because you appear to attribute a belief about the last photo that we certainly do not have:

“Maria says that the photo was not taken on Sunday 29 April as claimed by Lourenco. She says that the date and time stamp was altered so as to give the date of 29 April to fit in with the bogus story of the alleged kidnapping at Sagres that day. I agree with all those conclusions, and would add that this reminds us, of course, to the discussion about the ‘Last Photo’ which now suggest that it could have been taken on Sunday 29 April and not Thursday 3 May as claimed.”

We do NOT believe that this photo of Maddie was taken on Sunday 29 April.

We do NOT believe that this photo of Maddie was taken on Thursday 3 May.

This photo is so evidently fake that we are thinking of calling it “How-not-to-fake-a-photo-photo” instead of last photo.

We believe that this photo is a composite of 2 photos. One taken of Maddie alone, WE DON’T KNOW WHEN, a copy of which appears in the Mockumentary. The other of Gerry with Amelie, which we believe was taken on 18 May. These 2 photos were then superimposed one over the other resulting in what is this photo.

We also believe a third photo was used, one where Gerry has the sunglasses hanging vertically on his t-shirt. We suppose it was also taken on 18 May during the session by the pool with Gerry and Amelie.

The lenses of the sunglasses on the composite picture is taken from this 3rd photograph. The reason being that it was the only one where the photographer didn’t appear in the reflection of the sunglasses. In the original it could have been seen that the photographer wasn’t Kate and that detail had to be removed.

We have not changed our minds in any way about what we think of that photo as you seem to be implying in your post.

If you would be kind enough to edit your post to make this clear it would be appreciated because we don't want readers misled.”

We did not seek discussion about the photo. We gave our thoughts about it only to substantiate our request for Tony Bennett to edit his post. He made a statement about us which was incorrect, it was our duty to ask to have it corrected.

However it seems that this has spawned a debate about whether the photo is or isn’t manipulated thus the comment from anon above.


2. To be manipulated or not to be manipulated

Again, we repeat, we think the photo to have little importance to the material truth.

IF, we repeat IF, it was genuine and taken on the 29, it would ONLY prove that Maddie didn’t die on Saturday.

IF the photo was genuine and taken on the 29 that wouldn’t disprove that she died on the 3rd. Or 30th, 1st or 2nd.

However, if proven to be genuine and taken on 3rd then, obviously, the theory of death before that day would collapse.

Because of that, we think that for the people defending this theory the photo must be genuine and to have been taken on the 29th. And even if hell freezes around them on this issue, they will find a match somewhere, light up and say “look how hot the weather is today”.

We believe that Maddie died on the 3rd. For us, it would be highly convenient to say that the photo to have been taken on that day as the McCanns allege.

We don’t. It’s not our policy to twist fact to tale and we very much doubt that anything on that photo was taken on that day.

Does saying the photo is not from the 3rd disprove anything we have stated? No.

The only importance that photo does have in our opinion happens to be in our favour: it shows the absence of photos of what would be expected in a week long family holiday.

One thing that the defenders of April 29 have to agree on is that the photo was manipulated.

They must agree to that. The McCanns say it was taken on the 3rd, they say it was on the 29. For that to happen the McCanns had to have manipulated one of its elements: the date.

So, according to them it’s clear, that there was on the part of the McCanns the intention to deceive. That the McCanns made an effort to deceive.

Once that intent is detected and acknowledged, where then does one draw the line of manipulation and say where there is deceit and where there isn’t?

If there was the intention, which will be the case if date altered, how much was that photo manipulated?

They say it’s only on the date. Only the date was changed.

Why? Because that’s what fits their theory.

We think intellectual integrity demands that once one accepts there was the intention, for whatever reason, to manipulate one should keep an open mind to all possibilities of manipulation.


3. Sunglasses

Our assessment about the photo having being manipulated is only to with the sunglasses. The reflection on them is physically impossible.

We think it is fake not because of any pixel manipulation but because of physics.

Once one realises the photo shows a physical impossibility then it means it has been manipulated. That simple.

We didn’t measure shadows, compare intensities of sunshine nor look at flowering bougainvilleas although some of the arguments we have seen presented have substance. Others don’t. Like in the case of this picture:

Here we have an example of someone presenting a physical impossibility as reason. It’s physically impossible for a surface to reflect something that is behind it.

The floor arrow 1 says is being reflected cannot be. It’s a physical impossibility for that to happen. It’s an argument that doesn’t serve to prove sunglasses were photoshopped.

Arrow 2 is also untrue, as Gerry’s t-shirt doesn’t appear reflected.

To prove our point we will use 3 pairs of sunglasses.


4. Sunglasses #1: Gerry’s

These are the subject of the study. Prove the reflection they show to be impossible then manipulation is proved.

A circle is represented in 3 dimensions by an ellipse. The horizontal representation of a circle has in both extremes what we call the “vertical element of the ellipse” (green square). To put it simplistically, it’s the bit that connects the near and far horizontal lines of the ellipse.

The defenders of the originality of the photo say that what is reflected on the lens is the “vertical element of the ellipse”.

One can immediately see that the curvature of one has nothing to do with the other but let’s continue.

However the more one lowers the height from which the circle is being looked at the tighter is the ellipse that represents it and smaller is the vertical bit of the “vertical element of the ellipse” (green squares).

This alone shows very clearly that the reflection in Gerry’s sunglasses is a physical impossibility. Unless the kids pool was of gigantic proportions and even then the photo would have to be taken almost vertical to the pool to get such a straight line.


5. Sunglasses #2: Darren Ware’s

Darren Ware is a fierce defender of the originality of the photo. So much so that he has posted 2 videos in which he tries to prove that the “vertical element of the ellipse” reflected in Gerry’s sunglasses is real.

On the first video he used a mannequin with a mirror and sunglasses to represent Gerry and a round bed to represent the pool edge.

Darren Ware used a mirror because it has no convexity, unlike the sunglasses have, and so, he thought, he could show how big the “vertical element of the ellipse” could appear reflected.

It was because the sunglasses do have convexity his experiment was foiled. In trying to prove something he didn’t realise he was showing what would disprove him completely.

What Darren only wanted us to see was the vertical line reflected the flat surface of the mirror, but what he failed to realise was that the realistic reflection was showing on the convex surface of the sunglasses, the exact reflection to be replicated.

The image above shows there’s a HUGE difference between the same thing being reflected on a flat surface and being reflected on a convex one.

A really HUGE difference.

As can be read in the Facebook thread where this was discussed, we immediately corrected Darren Ware by posting the picture above.

Darren Ware first responded by showing the “vertical element of the ellipse” (green rectangle) to which I replied: “That bit you pointed out is but a little bit of the edge, it would represent about a foot of the edge of the pool. Are you saying that the reflection is the reflection of a foot of the edge 10 feet away?”.

There was no response to this question. however he came back with a second video:

This time he cleared a room of furniture and represented the edge of the pool with toilet paper.

This time the mannequin didn’t have either a mirror or sunglasses (which he showed to have with him) but a pair of some kind of acrylic glasses.

The reason given for this was “my sunglasses just are opaque, they are not reflective enough, okay, as you can see you can see through them not like Gerry’s sunglasses at all. It’s very difficult with the dim light of this room to see the effect, however light travels in straight lines, it does NOT get affected by what it is bouncing off, unless you’re in a black hole with incredibly high levels of gravity, light photons travel in straight lines, so reflections happen the same no matter what they being reflected in.”

Darren Ware didn’t need to make the second video. His sunglasses had been reflective enough in the first one.

But with his explanation as to why he doesn’t use them, he has just said that what we see in those funny mirror tents in fairs, where our image is intentionally distorted, isn’t real. We're all just imaging things when we see ourselves completely distorted in those weird reflections.

But the same Darren Ware replies to another poster, Isabel Oliveira, who asked him why the photographer’s reflection doesn’t appear on the lenses of Gerry’s sunglasses:

“Isabel... in answer to your question: It all depends on a complex variety of factors. Key ones are distance between the camera and the subject, and the shape (i.e. convexity) of whatever is reflecting back to you. So, for example, in a portrait taken close up you'll see a very wide angled reflection (such as a whole room) of the area behind the photographer...but in the case of the Lat Photo the photographer was possibly 5 meters away from the subject and so the reflected image would be a very narrow field of view. Why can't you see the photographer in his lenses? Simply because, since at that distance the field of view would be narrow, there's a greater chance of not seeing the photographer than doing so.”

Now the convexity matters. But please note that this response is all about physics. Not a single word about pixels. Angles, distances, shapes (i.e. convexity), angles and fields. And that is correct as only physics matter when discussing reflections.

But do also note how Darren does not refer to this “complex variety of factors” [his words] when simplifying things his way – even having gone goes to the point saying they don’t matter (“it does NOT get affected by what it is bouncing off” and “so reflections happen the same no matter what they being reflected in”) – to explain how the reflection of 1 or 2ft of the edge of the pool would fill up vertically a whole lens located at “possibly 5 meters away” when the reflections of objects on lenses from that distance are a fraction of their real size. Those 1 or 2 feet would be millimetres.

These are what we call Darren Ware’s sunglasses:

6. Sunglasses #3: Textusa’s

During the day we spent together in our hotel we asked friends of ours to pose by the kids pool of the hotel. The idea was to replicate the last photo. Only missing a small child to make it perfect:

We have censored all elements that may identify this couple. Experience has unfortunately shown that there are some out there who in their desperate attempts to discredit us will go and do anything even disrespecting the privacy of others who have nothing to do with the case.

The pool, we have checked later on Google Maps was the exact same size of the kids pool at Tapas, with an approximate diameter of 7 metres. The red circle was drawn over the kids pool at our hotel.

So what is seen reflected is very similar in distortion as to was expected to be seen in Gerry’s sunglasses:

These are what we call the Textusa’s sunglasses:

7. The 3 sunglasses

8. The “vertical element of the ellipse” in the 3 sunglasses

Isn’t it VERY CLEAR that the vertical element in Gerry’s glasses is the clear exception? The impossible one?


9. The photographer

What unravelled for us the last photo “mystery” was Isabel Oliveira’s question to Darren Ware as to why no photographer appeared on the lenses of Gerry’s sunglasses.

We saw that the glasses had been photoshopped but we simply could not understand why. And the mistake seemed so evident that this particular photoshopping baffled us. We even thought it was on purpose so as to spawn discussions around it by conspiracy theorists.

But Isabel’s question made us realise that with the angle (straight ahead) and height (almost the same as photographer) which Gerry is looking at the camera the photographer had to be reflected in the lens. He or she wasn’t. To hide that could only mean in the original photo it would be visible that the photographer wasn’t Kate.

That realisation made us ask, why not then use another picture to photoshop, one with an horizontal reflection?

The answer is that the Tapas kid’s pool is not a photographic studio. Pictures were taken there and the realisation that photographer appeared in all photos with the horizontal reflection of pool.

And here Darren Ware’s sunglasses help solve the mystery. For the photographer’s reflection to not appear he has to be holding the camera from a significant angle away, vertically or horizontally. Using a mirror:

A mirror has a flat surface. This narrows significantly the angles from which the photographer would be reflected. The convexity of the lenses of sunglasses make this angle much wider. Unless one is taking a profile picture or with the subject looking away from camera, the photographer appears horizontally.

Vertically, it’s easier not to be shown. One just has to photograph the subject from a different height. That’s why in Darren Ware’s photograph there’s no photographer: he’s taken the picture from above the mannequin:

In Textusa’s picture, taken at almost same level of subject, the photographer (red arrow) can be seen:

The blue arrow shows a reflection of where Amelie would have appeared reflected.

The only photograph they would have without the photographer’s reflection would have been one where the glasses were hanging on Gerry’s t-shirt:

The vertical angle from where it was taken, makes only the reflection of the other side of the pool appear (one would have to see the original to see exactly what is being reflected).

That would explain the vertical lines in Gerry’s reflection. They are not vertical lines at all, they are horizontal lines rotated when the lenses of glasses are photoshopped.

This also explains the little pink bit, which would be Amelie’s hat reflected where she was in the original picture – not the last photo, as the original from where the glasses were taken from has nothing to do with it.

To show how easy it is to photoshop the lenses, we did just that:

Only we didn’t use photoshop. We used a much less powerful and basic image editing tool: paintbrush. Just cropped the left lens (left from the point of view of a person looking at Gerry), flipped it horizontally and placed it over the pixels that were in the right lens.

The left lens is the original. Please tell the difference.

That simple. A photoshopped image leaving all shadows and other pixels intact.


10. Experts

The defenders of the originality of the photo say that it’s genuine because 2 experts say it is. We have never heard this. The best we heard to that effect was that they thought that it was “fairly certain” that it was an original.

“Fairly certain” is quite far from saying “this was NOT 'several generations' away from the original, that in fact it was NO 'generations' away from the original, and indeed was an ORIGINAL, GENUINE, UNPHOTOSHOPPED photo”.

By the way, if any expert had said that then they would show themselves not to be experts at all. No expert could, in a technological area, say for certainty that a photo has not been tampered with.

Reason being that in this area one can only use the tools one knows technology has at that moment. One is not aware if there is new technology that renders the tools one has useless.

An expert can determine if a photo has been manipulated but no expert would give absolute certainty that it was not. The best an expert can do is to say that with the tools available he detected no manipulation. That is not saying it was not manipulated.

This is what the experts in question have said:

“PeterMac on Wed Oct 15, 2014 4:23 pm

“20.1 I have taken an initial look at the image. The artefacts alluded to in the pdf document that you sent are simply JPEG compression artefacts (as described here: http://www.fourandsix.com/blog/2011/6/29/that-looks-fake.html ). If you magnify other parts of the image you will see similar artefacts. I also performed a forensic analysis to determine if the lighting and the shadows on the people and background are consistent -- they are. I see no other anomalies in the photo. So, at first glance, I see no evidence of photo tampering.

I will add that it is fairly easy to change dates in an image's metadata or for these dates to be wrong. As such these dates should not be solely relied upon.

Regards,

Y Y Y Y

20.2 “From what I saw I couldn't see anything that would lead me to believe beyond reasonable doubt it had been doctored. The fringing mentioned can be caused by auto sharpening used in consumer digital cameras to make 'better' or 'sharper' images. These artefacts can often be made worse from image compression algorithms out of photoshop or other image manipulation software.”

Neither are stating without doubt that it was not doctored.

We don’t know what was asked of the experts. We don’t know if they were paid for their opinion. If they weren’t we don't what was their motivation to collaborate nor what was their commitment when they answered.

We could be confronted with a brush-off answer like we saw was given by the Wayback Machine with its first reply.

We don’t know the pressure they felt in saying the photo was genuine because of fear of being sued if they said otherwise.

We don’t know what photo they looked at, as we very much doubt the McCanns sent the originals to the expert for said analysis.

Without looking at the detailed reports from experts we don’t know what their opinions are precisely.

Experts do not create truth. Experts explain truth. Truth was always there before they explain it. It’s their expertise that makes us see it when previously our ignorance did not allow us to do so. But what experts can't do is to invent truth.

It’s our eyes and our brains that tell us what truth is. No one and nothing else. Experts’ opinions guide us to more solid reasons to what we believe to be truth. Because we believe it to be so and not because they tell us it is. 

Galileo Galilei was surrounded by experts that at the time stated without doubt that the earth was flat. These experts and those supporting them, did not allow anyone to question such expertise.

This is what I said to Tony Bennett on Facebook, on September 22, concerning the experts:

“I have already pointed out to you that the experts you keep repeating have deemed the last photo as “photoshop-free” are completely useless for the discussion we have had here, unless they have expertise in other areas than the ones you’ve mentioned.

I am not putting them down or minimising their opinions. As you’ll see I would very much like to hear their opinion on something. But this is NOT about photoshopping this is about the physics of imagery. This is not their area of expertise.

(…)

To your photoshopping experts I would put only one question: are the lenses of the sunglasses photoshopped?

However, I would only be satisfied with only one answer from them: “yes”. And I can tell you right now that I would expect for their answer to be “no”.

Before you criticise me I am not being disrespectful to them or stubbornly accepting only one answer as I’ll explain next.

The answer “no” would be the most likely but for me would be inconclusive.

Why? Because I think the lenses shown belong to the frame and that the frame belongs to the face. So I’m almost certain that the analysis by experts of the border between lenses/frame and the border between frame/head would both result in a conclusive “no, it’s not photoshopped”. And they would be correct.

I have some limited experience in image formatting, am not an expert and my “work” is exposed in the images I publish on the blog. It’s limited but it is experience and is enough to allow me to know that what I would be asking your experts to detect (now we’re talking pixels and not physics) is very hard or even impossible to detect: the superimposition of solid colour over the exact same solid colour.

What I think was done, was they cut the image by the middle of the frame of glasses from one picture and superimpose it over the image of the same pair of glasses of another picture. As the pair of glasses was the same in both the pictures so the tonalities of the frame in the image from which was taken would be the same as the one of the frame that was superimposed.

The “scar” would be in the middle of the frame and not on the borders lenses/frame nor on the border frame/head. Those borders would be originals. The first from the image from where it was cut and the latter from the image in which it was pasted.

Thus me saying it would be very hard or impossible to detect.

In this matter I would be very pleased and attentive at what your experts would have to say about it. It would be their area of expertise and they would now be correctly directed was to what they would be looking for, with precision: only the frame of the glasses.

If they said yes, they would prove my point but if they said no they wouldn’t disprove it for the reasons said.”


11. The manipulation of the last photo

Our reader, Nuala Seaton made the following entry on Facebook:

“Anthony Bennett I'm not interested in what your experts had to say. We don't know who they are and we don't know what questions they were asked. Besides which no-one should blindly take the word of an expert and I'm surprised that you do. Anyone who has seen expert witnesses giving testimony in court cases knows two experts on the same subject can have totally opposing views.

So expecting to shut down this debate with the "experts" argument isn't going to work. We're intelligent people with minds of our own and we use them.

The reflection in GM's sunglasses is impossible. The photo was photoshopped.

Isabel Oliveira has asked Darren Ware a perfectly valid question about the photographer's reflection not being in GM's sunglasses. So far he's ignored her question, so we await his response.

It's my belief that the reason the reflection in GM's sunglasses had to be photoshopped is because it DID show the reflection of the person taking the photograph, and that person wasn't Kate McCann.

It's also my belief that the base photo (at the pool) was taken around 17th/18th May 2007 and the image of Maddie was added in afterwards. There are photos here of GM wearing the same clothes as in the Last Photo and AM with her pink hat:

http://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/1857.htm”

I responded to Nuala on 22 September at 11:26:

“Nuala Seaton, agree totally with you.

Isabel Oliveira's question has just unlocked for me the mystery. Gerry is looking straight at the camera, the glasses are perpendicular to the viewer and at about the same height. The photographer would have to be reflected. Not should but had to! The glasses are perpendicular to the camera.

And it could be easily seen it was not Kate.

My opinion is this.

Photo of Maddie taken during week, could be Sunday, could be any other day, under the context of holiday. It could even have been taken by the childcare people or by the McCanns.

There was a need to to create family time. The few pics taken of Maddie dictate what can be done. This probably was the only photo she took around pool.

After Maddie died, and it could be on the date you say (the heat had passed, media were domesticated to reporting when McCanns gave press conference, clothes and sunlight seem to fit and explains why it took so long for picture to surface), Gerry and Amelie pose for pic.

In "studio" the photographer reflection problem is detected. Probably when the whole picture set up. It needs to be solved. They simply took the glasses from other image taken that afternoon and was pasted over the original.

The picture from where they copied glasses from would be one where Gerry would have them vertically on his shirt, and the reflection being of the opposite border of pool from where he's seating.

The choice of picture from where to choose from was most likely conditioned with the photographer's reflection. Most pictures would have it. This one didn't because the glasses were on his chest and the angle makes what is reflected to be beneath the horizon line of camera, thus the other side of the border.

All this, obviously, MY opinion. My thanks to you and Isabel. It's always the bits and pieces of unconditioned debate that allows one to withdraw the best conclusions.”

This is what we think happened with the manipulation:

A photo of Maddie was taken during the week:

A photo session by the pool, in the weeks after Maddie disappeared, was arranged to create the idea the McCann family spent time together by the pool. One photo was chosen:

In a studio, when doing the composition, it was realised that the photographer appeared in the reflection. Another photo taken during that session by the pool where such a reflection didn’t appear was chosen:

The three put together made up the last photo:

Post-Scriptum:

In response to a comment from Blackcat on 13 Nov 2015, 19:23:00.

Original image from http://www.mccannfiles.com/id280.html

Post-Scriptum 2: Debunking vertical straight lines and flatness of Gerry’s sunglasses.

We have never said the reflection on the lenses was unreal. We believe it to be very real. The reflection seen existed in our opinion. If one considers the lens a rectangle, there can be seen that a line crosses both long sides of that rectangle.

We say that line is a reflection of an horizontal line as the glasses were hanging on t-shirt. When the lenses were rotated to fit glasses on face, this horizontal line became vertical:

We imagine that if Gerry had been standing next, or near a corner of a building, the projection of it would probably produce a vertical line on the sunglasses.

What we said and maintain is that the reflection of the edge a circle with 7 metres in diameter - the kids pool - cannot produce a vertical line as the one seen at the distance Gerry is sitting from it. THAT is impossible to reflect a near perfect vertical line on sunglasses.

Gerry’s sunglasses:

Getty image #1:

Getty image #2:

The 3 put together for comparison:

Gerry’s sunglasses are NOT vertically flat.

Note, on the last photo, the reflection is of the edge of a building which we know happens to be a straight line.

A straight line, edge of building, appears reflected curved whereas a curved line, edge of pool, appears reflected straight. Go figure.

About the reflections on sunglasses we have this video:in which, as a reader as pointed out, are not the ones worn in the last photo but only similar:

From it we took the following printscreens:

We would like to call the attention to this photo:

As can be seen in video, Gerry is driving. What one sees above is the reflection of a truck crossing with the vehicle he’s driving.

This truck would be approximately at the distance the “vertical element of the ellipse” would be from where Gerry is sitting in the final photo.

Please observe what is the size of the reflection of the truck with what its actual size would be and how its straight lines are curved, distorted according to the convexity of the lenses.


Post-Scriptum 3: Similarities

It one rotates the lenses of Getty photo # 2 and Gerry's sunglasses one gets very similar reflections as can be seen.

The reason for this to happen is because both are the reflection of a straight line (in the case of the opposite side of pool a near horizontal line) on the “southern hemisphere” of the convexity of lenses.

Either Gerry has a building or wall to his left (and it must be a leaning one like the Tower of Pisa) or then the reflection as is shown is just impossible.