Pareidolia

[arthwollipot]

Spooky Snap Taken At Aquarium (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1804838.ece).

Okay, it's The Sun, but still...

IT’S just what you’d expect to see in a snap from an aquarium. A shark, blue water — and a disembodied HUMAN HEAD. Emma Place, 21, took this eerie photo on her phone at Hull’s £53million attraction The Deep.
She said: “It’s spooky.”
One boss at the aquarium, once a hospital isolation ward, said: “There’ll be a logical explanation. We just can’t find it.


The comments here and on Fark.com suggest reflections, or a fake (remember the Anakin ghost from a while back?), but I think it's simple pareidolia.


Opinions?

[tesscaline]

To me it looks like a reflection. But, being human, I'm not exactly immune to paredolia myself.

Either way, it's not anything paranormal.

[Scazon]

Good photoshop skills?

[SphereGuy]

Normally, I'm the first to say "don't jump to the conclusion that it was photoshopped" but it's a little too good to think otherwise. If there was a rock formation that looked like that I'm sure other's would be duplicating it in thier photos.

[TMiguel]

That is really a head, Photoshop is the correct answer. It has to many anatomically correct features, tell tale signs comes from luminosity and reflectivity of the that doesn’t quite mach the environment and location it is in. I’m an amateur on this so I could be wrong, but that is not what looks like to me.

[Cuddles]

Definitely photoshopped. I especially like the way that their top related story is the faked picture of a shark and surfer that was doing the rounds a few years ago.

It's also worth bearing in mind that the Sun has been forced to apologise before for stealing pictures from B3ta.com. This isn't even a case of people sending fake photos to the Sun, their "journalists" actually go out looking for fake pictures and copy them, then make up a story to go with it. Of course, I don't know if that's what happened in this particular case, but I wouldn't be at all surprised.

[shayes666]

First let me start off by saying I LOVE pareidolia! I have always enjoyed finding faces and what not in random visual noise (Skulls in particular). As far as this pic goes, I'd say photoshop. Rags like the Sun are notorious for using photoshoped shlock for their BS infotainment "news" stories.

[JohnWS]

If you open the picture in notepad, 'Adobe' shows up in the string of text. Given that it was published in a newspaper, I'm guessing it's been through Photoshop anyway so that's not particularly damning? It's either a reflection or it's 'shopped IMHO. No reason to look for more exotic explanations. Again just my opinion.

[MattusMaximus]

At first glance, I'm going to say this is a fake. I come to this conclusion by a quick analysis of the light sources and shadows in the image. The primary light source is above the water, and by looking at the shark, fish, and top part of the rock/coral formation you can see how the shadows of the "face" should be cast. But when you look at the "face", such as looking at the ear, you can see that the shadows cast there are not consistent with what should be cast due to the overhead light source. I don't think, based upon the lighting, that you should be able to even see the "ear" in the first place. But that's just me - other ideas?

[scotth]

It looks nothing like a reflection would. A reflection would retain significant amounts of normal color.

Besides that, I have the smoking gun. It is completely a photoshopped photo.

Here is a 2 frame gif animation that I created. It is an alternation between the green and blue color channels of the image, each as a greyscale.

http://www.hurstphoto.biz/badastronomy/aquareidolia.gif (http://www.hurstphoto.biz/badastronomy/aquareidolia.gif)

It is VERY obvious the head was added at a different time from the rest of the image. Here is what you are seeing…. In the tank, green and blue light are lighting objects in the tank from different direction, which makes them appear to shift back and forth when flipping between color channels.

The head doesn’t have this effect because it was lit evenly (by color) and merely color shifted after the fact to match color of the tank.

ETA: Or possibly, the tank is causing a giant chromatic aberation of the contents... either way, the head doesn't have it. It isn't in the tank.

[Gagglegnash]

Hi

It looks nothing like a reflection would. A reflection would retain significant amounts of normal color.

Besides that, I have the smoking gun. It is completely a photoshopped photo.

Here is a 2 frame gif animation that I created. It is an alternation between the green and blue color channels of the image, each as a greyscale.

http://www.hurstphoto.biz/badastronomy/aquareidolia.gif (http://www.hurstphoto.biz/badastronomy/aquareidolia.gif)

It is VERY obvious the head was added at a different time from the rest of the image. Here is what you are seeing…. In the tank, green and blue light are lighting objects in the tank from different direction, which makes them appear to shift back and forth when flipping between color channels.

The head doesn’t have this effect because it was lit evenly (by color) and merely color shifted after the fact to match color of the tank.

ETA: Or possibly, the tank is causing a giant chromatic aberation of the contents... either way, the head doesn't have it. It isn't in the tank.


Gorgeous! Absolutely... GORGEOUS!

[Femke]

What a brilliant way of showing this!
Speaking of pareidolia, today I found this on

http://www.moillusions.com/2008/10/indian-ipod-google-earth.html

that supposedly can be found in Google Earth near Medicine Hat, AB Canada.
I have not been able to spot it myself, does anyone think this one is 'shopped? This one seems too cool to be true.