Besides being an ace cameraman, my good friend and colleague Findlay Muir is one heck of a photographer. Like most people these days, he always has some form of camera nearby - unlike most people, he gets really, really good shots (most people settle for average shots). For example, when he and I were in O'Hare in November, 2005 (sorry, no UFO), Findlay had his camera at the ready, and got all sorts of nifty shots, including the one above on the tramway between terminals.
Here's another one, this time from Blackpool, England, when he and I were there on a day off from filming Best Evidence back in June, 2006. I can guarantee you that pigeons move fast (you would be surprised) - but Findlay was faster.If Findlay had seen a UFO at O'Hare, or anywhere else for that matter, he would probably have a picture of it - especially if it was hovering before it zipped off.
Now Findlay is a professional, so maybe he moves just a bit faster than your average person. But one look at YouTube, or Google Video, or Flickr, should be enough to convince you that non-professionals can move pretty quick these days, and get the shot. Indeed, we live in the video era.
So, I ask again - where are the O'Hare UFO photos?
Peter Davenport has been all over the media trumpeting this story (good, no doubt, for NUFORC's profile, at least in the short term). Surely he asked the witnesses if they had been quick enough to take a photo (if it was me, this would be the first question I would ask)?
In the two months between when the story was first reported, and when it broke last week, surely Mr. Davenport, or someone else, thought that maybe there should be a photo, and that this would be important, one way or another?
Did it ever cross his mind, before he went to the press, that maybe he should hold off until the story had been properly investigated?
Did it ever cross his mind that perhaps it would have been best to wait, and make sure all the "t's" were crossed, and the "i's" dotted, before making this a big cause celebre? Apparently not.
The O'Hare story, for good or ill, will now define how the public views the UFO phenomenon for the next few months, maybe even years.
Let's just hope that Mr. Davenport hasn't sold us a pig in a poke.
Let's hope he, or someone else, finds that photo that should be there.
Update: Stan Friedman was on the X-Zone this evening (you can catch it in the X-Zone archives). Rob McConnell asked Stan about why there were no photos, and Stan responded - I paraphrase - that it would have been impossible to get a good shot of a relatively small object at a height of 1,900 feet or so (although that appears to be the height of the cloud cover it "shot up through", so "it" must have been hovering at a lower height than that).
This is patently absurd. You can't have it both ways - you can't assert that people can make a perfectly good sighting of an "object" at somewhere under 1,900 feet, and observe details such as whether or not the "object" was rotating, on the one hand, and then say, "but it was too high up to get a decent photo." Especially when the supposed "object" was just sitting there for a prolonged period of time.
Paul Kimball
12 comments:
That's a great shot, of the pigeons - reminds me of a shot from the "Goodbye Blue Sky" segment in Pink Floyd's The Wall
This is patently absurd. You can't have it both ways...
Sure you can, when you're Stan the Man. All you have to do is say it quick and slick, and with an air of great confidence.
Best,
RDB
Rod:
That's a great shot, of the pigeons - reminds me of a shot from the "Goodbye Blue Sky" segment in Pink Floyd's The Wall
I'll pass that on to Findlay - he's one of the best, and that is indeed a great shot.
Paul
The Tribune, which broke the story, claims that there is a digital photo taken by a pilot at the time of the sighting, but that the pilot fears for his job if it gets out. Won't know if it's true unless the photo does come out, but it does prove the basic premise that someone should have had a camera and been able to take a pic, because supposedly someone did.
the pilot fears for his job if it gets out
I don't believe this for a second, because he has no reason to fear for his job.
See: http://redstarfilms.blogspot.com/2007/01/ohare-if-photos-or-video-exist-will-we.html
Paul
"So, I ask again - where are the O'Hare UFO photos?"
The tired "no pictures" meme of idiot scoffers is as lame as it is illogical.
First off, because your friend "Findlay" - a professional photographer, "always has a camera ready" (subjectively, anecdotally, and therefore "questionabley" according to you) doesn't mean everyone does - or even that anyone does, of even in reality that your buddy Findlay would have at a particular point in time, when ANY unanticipated random event occurs, be it a UFO at O'Hare or a n'ked fat man wearing wearing a derby riding a unicycle down mainstreet.
This is especially true at work, if one's work doesn't involve taking pictures, like airplane mechanics and pilots. If I was walking through an airport my camera - if I took one, which I generally didn't on business trips to Chicago, would have been packed away in my bag.
As far as cell phones are concerned, my cell doesn't have a camera. This is another idiotic "scoffer" claim I've read about the incident. My cell has a camera, therefore everyone else's must, so how come no pics? Huh? My cell has a camera. Therefore, the specific and credible accounts of multiple witnesses must be due to... what?
There are scoffers and there are skeptics. (And you're a scoffer, not a skeptic). Skeptics evaluate evidence and make logical arguments based thereon. You're a low-level "scoffer", who makes extremely weak arguments based on broad assumptions and logical falacies like this, "...geez, everyone has a camera these days, so since there is no picture, then the corroborating testimony of multiple lucid and credible witnessess who are clear and specific in what they describe - what they describle being a UFO... which would be enough testimony before a court of law to send a man to death row if a murder was witnessed, must therefore be false. (And if a picture DID exist, scoffers would "hand-wave" it as a hoax, of course. The better the picture the more likely it is to be a hoax. The blurrier the picture the more likely it is to be "anything except what the witness described, a UFO")
We went from a 13 second flight, 20 feet in the air at Kittyhawk in 1903, to breaking the sound barrier 45 years later, to sending a man to the moon and back 24 years after that... the scientific age, according to historians is about 200 years old... Netowian physics gave way to the breakthrough of Einstein's paradigms of time and space, which ushered in the nuclear age, and now qunatum mechanics tells us that the subatomic particles may be non-local, that is objects disappear and reappear at different points without traveling through space...
...but, nah, a civilization 10's of thousands of years more scientifically advanced than ours couldn't possibly travel to earth.
Despite evidence like:
- Colares, 1977
- Iran Jet Fighter incident, 1976
- JAL flight over Alaska in 1985
- The 1989-90 Belgium Wave
- 1980 Rendlesham
- 1/5/2000 Illinois Triangle
...to name a few of the many confounding cases that have multiple, specific, corroborating witnesses supporting photographic and/or radar evidence to back-up these accounts.
Photographic evidence - to scoffers, never mattered much in the past. Suddenly, in the O'Hare incident, it's all that matters.
Sorry, idiot scoffers. You can't have it both ways.
NickTrop
The Scoffer's Playbook:
Good Picture Exists (like the one taken during the Belgium triangle): "Too good to be true. It's a hoax."
Blurry picture (as is typical when photographing any moving object at high altitudes hand-held with crappy consumer cameras): "What? That could be anything!" (As they ignore multiple, specific, and detailed corroborating accounts).
And now with O'Hare?
What?!?! No pictures!?!
LOL... Scoffer. Worse and unintentionally funnier than the True Believers.
NickTrop
Actually, Nick, photographic evidence (or any evidence that can corroborate witness accounts, which is the weakest form of evidence) has always mattered to me. I guess you just haven't been reading here long enough.
Or perhaps you're just an "idiot believer".
Paul
Paul,
I love self-appointed experts like you who think they have more credibility than a nuclear physicist.
Right, you are smarter than Stanton Friedman, whose opinion you call "patently absurd." OK hmmmm.
Perhaps you are the one who is "absurd" or should I say "idiot skeptic?"
Scott
I love self-appointed experts like you who think they have more credibility than a nuclear physicist.
And I love people who bow down to authority and grovel at their feet. So Stan has a M.Sc. in nuclear physics from 50 years ago. So what? That makes him an expert on photography how, exactly?
Right, you are smarter than Stanton Friedman, whose opinion you call "patently absurd."
I didn't say that. Of course, I am more knowledgeable about modern photography and video technology than Stan, who is a self-confessed semi-Luddite.
Perhaps you are the one who is "absurd" or should I say "idiot skeptic?"
You can say whatever you want. It's a free country. The problem is that none of it makes any sense, and completely ignores the facts.
But if that makes you feel better, or safer, or more comfortable, by all means, go ahead.
Paul
paul.. no reason? his bosses completely ignored everything he said about the situation. People lose their jobs from claiming to have seen UFO'S all of the time. It's likely he would, do you think a airport wants one of its pilots claiming some odd stories where people would think he was insane? no they don't. so they would fire him. Think.
oh and by the way, their are photos you goofs. Look them up
paul.. no reason? his bosses completely ignored everything he said about the situation. People lose their jobs from claiming to have seen UFO'S all of the time.
Name one such instance where an airline pilot or other employee has been fired. Just one.
It's likely he would, do you think a airport wants one of its pilots claiming some odd stories where people would think he was insane? no they don't. so they would fire him.
Ah, but they did report it, and have gone public with it. It was a big story for a few days (I guess you must have missed that). Why then, using your "logic", have they not all been fired?
Think.
I'd take that advice if I were you before I started giving it out.
oh and by the way, their are photos you goofs. Look them up
You mean the proven fakes? Yeah, right.
Provide a link to one genuine photo. Again, just one.
I didn't think so.
Honestly, while this is a good point, I do have a 1000$ prosumer camera, and honestly, without a DSLR and a 1000$+ lens, I'm not gonna get a good shot of something 1900ft away either. I'm lucky to get non blurry shots of stuff 300 feet away. So.
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