Sunday 10 August 2014

Judyth Baker Study of Shirt for Lee Harvey Oswald on the stairs

 I was an artist and photo retoucher for Steck Vaughn Publishers, Austin, TX, 1965-1967. We should use black and white photos and not compare any other color, such as sepia, with a black and white. We work with black and white to keep parameters concerning color out of consideration. All photos are pixelated, but Altgens6 was originally made from an emulsion film on plastic, using a silver colloid subject to brownian motion and chemicals when exposed and then processed. Pixels, when magnified, degrade a pixelated photo. We stick to black and white and to a similar number of pixels in corresponding samples in the Oswald and Lovelady photos selected for their similar resolution, keeping 'color values' out --which can skew results. The Altgens6 photo is in black and white--not sepia, for example. Of course you should understand that you lose information when you use a color photo and then remove some or all of the color. That violates the objectives of the experiment, which rely on retaining as much original information as possible from salient samples, which are selected, of course, from the same area of the shirt (sleeve, chest, etc.). When magnified identically, for "O" and "L" samples we obtain unique patterns exhibiting a degenerated surface area. The same phenomenon occurs when the Doorway Figure in Altgens6 is magnified (it is also pixelated, and we select the same level of degradation). No photoshopping is used. You can try the technique out easily for yourself, simply by inserting all the samples (which must be obtained from near-identical locations on each shirt) into a MW document and magnifying accordingly, cropping to obtain the new magnification, though there are other ways to do this, such as with Picasa. Again and again, the emergent patterns in Oswald's shirt samples correspond to what we see in the Doorway Figure; in contrast, Lovelady's shirt samples fail to produce a pattern remotely similar to the Doorway Figure's shirt samples. As for Lee changing his shirt, it scarcely matters, because in my book ME & LEE--and way back in 1999-- I reported having purchased two shirts--one for my former husband, one for Lee (a two-for-one sale) after Lee remarked that the shirt pattern was exactly like a shirt he already owned, which,however, had been damaged. Marina had purchased several shirts for Lee from Sears with money she'd earned teaching Russian to a student, and Lee had torn the shirt. I was delighted to be able to buy the shirt without its purchase being shown on the receipt (my former husband was a miser and would have asked about a second shirt). So it really doesn't matter whether lee changed his shirt or not, because both had very similar patterns (as all readers of ME & LEE know). Below are two more examples of the match (I didn't expect any such thing when this began--the project was designed, originally, to see if I could detect any patterns in Altgens6 that were hidden until magnified (this degenerates--degrades--the resolution, of course). The influence of Brownian motion was possible, potentially explaining why some of this tiny bit of the photo might have become distorted, though retouching and rough handling while being processed also seemed to have influenced this section of the photo. When I magnified the "O" and "L" samples, i was astonished. Please note two more examples, below--this time, from the chest near the white t-shirt line, in all three cases...first, the "O"...then, the "L"... this unexpected result can be repeated all over the shirts where there are corresponding sections. The shirt cannot be Lovelady's (the one he claimed he wore -- black and white version)... Lee Oswald's shirt, on the other hand, consistently delivers a pattern similar to what we observe in the magnified (degenerated) Altgens6. I say it as a scientist should: "...someone who was wearing Lee Oswald's shirt was standing in the TSBD doorway." sample "O" (to left) is compared to the Doorway Figure, Altgens6, sample, same area of shirt....the pattern that emerges is similar. Below, Sample "L" is compared: the emergent patterns here are too dissimilar to be of the same shirt....(these are the newest examples--screen shots, currently unable to print and scan due to my new location)....

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