Motion Blur and Atypical Flare Over Syria

The following are images taken from the boom position of a McDonnell Douglas KC-10 Extender aircraft while refueling an F-22 Raptor over Syria. The point of these pictures here is to demonstrate a good use of motion blur and a form of lens flare both “normal” and “atypical” as used by our unwitting photographer for the benefit of those interested in the arts of visual effects.

In our first picture we have the image of a stabilized F-22 underneath the KC-10 with the city in the distance. The F-22 has matched its motion to the boom and our photographer so there is no motion blur (there is actually a tiny amount) but the ground underneath the plane is moving at a steady clip as you can see by the streak of its lights. Additionally both the bright distant lights and lights/reflections on the airplane itself are demonstrating what we might call “typical flare”, e.g. a roughly circular, symmetric and Gaussian glow on top of (double exposed if you will) the base imagery. Also look for saturation blowout where the image “becomes so bright” that the color is attenuated to “a very bright” white.

In the second picture, our eyes are drawn to the green flare on the left side of the image. The conceit here is that there has been some moisture on the lens, whether from rain or condensation or other. The water distorts the otherwise circular flare (as maintained for the red light) into a idiosyncratic and atypical flare such as we might see in the so-called real world, which in fact this is.

Notice that the lights on the ground are far less noticeable as we have moved over a more rural part of Syria.

In our final image, we have a different point of view. The fighter still has matched motion to the boom and hence no noticable blur, but the lights are also seen from a different angle and more in the distance, so there is also less blur.

The funny thing about motion blur done well is that at speed the apparent blur disappears.

Source of Images on The Aviationist

Wikipedia page on the KC-10

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_KC-10_Extender

Reality vs Visual Effects: Underwater Alien

The following picture was taken by scuba diver Kyle McBurnie. You can read about it here

here on the New Scientist web site.

Were I to see this in a movie, I would know that it had to be fake. The lighting is too good, the pose is too good, the seal completely convinces me that it is intelligent and is aware of me (the viewer). There are not particular technical reasons why this photograph should look fake unlike others in this series.

The only reason I think it is visual effects is because it is too interesting and powerful an image.

Reality vs Special Effects: The Case of the Deepwater Horizon

One of my favorite photographs of a catastrophe of all time is this photograph of the Deepwater Horizon blowing up in April of 2010.

Boom !

It is part of a series of photographs taken by an individual on a nearby boat, one of the boats which picked up survivors from this clusterfuck of environmental destruction caused by the shallow greed and criminal stupidity of large corporations.

Few photographs are of this quality and drama. It has spectacle, it has detail, it has scope, it has exotic technology. It elicits a sense of awe and wonder at the magnitude of the disaster caught in an instant by the photographer. It ranks with the great images of its type, such as that of the Hindenberg disaster.

When I first saw it, it looked fake to me.   

In fact, it looked so fake, I wondered why the usual suspects did not discuss in public the obvious implications that the event was planned by the CIA / Illuminati / Rothschild organization in order to raise oil prices, declare martial law, and put everyone in a concentration camp underground before Jesus returned and we left with the space aliens.

Here is why the image looks like a visual effect from a movie:

1. The perfect and dramatic point of view and timing

Rarely do we get to see a disaster from a perfect point of view at the moment of disaster. Generally when such things happen and there is a photographic record of it, the disaster itself is a distance away, or the timing is not quite right, or the photograph suffers from technical flaws due to the unexpected nature of the event. It might be shot through a window, or have someone in the frame that obscures part of what is going on, or there is significant camera shake. A beautiful example of this was the Russian "dash cam" view of the meteor through the window of the automobile.

2. The exquisite detail in part of the photograph

For reasons that probably have to do with the unusual lighting, combined with post processing in photoshop, we have here amazing detail of a large civil engineering artifact. Just look at the detail on the side of this contraption... its completely fabulous. I suspect that some variable contrast enhancement and unsharp masking has been applied. It has that look to it. I also happens to look like a painting on glass, as I discuss in the next item. The actual photograph was taken, I suspect, with a tripod and/or with an image stabilization lens. There is no camera shake worth noting.

3. The composition of the photograph appears to be layered.

Visual effects is generally a photomontage of different elements. Those elements might be photography on a stage, model photography, 2D painted elements and 3D synthetic elements. In the history of visual effects some of the most interesting matte paintings consisted of what was called "paintings on glass" where a painting had transparent areas where live action could be composited.

The probable layers front to back are: foreground water, with glint animation, painting of the Horizon leaning at an angle, first smoke layer, fire layer, second smoke layer, background sky layer, for a total of six layers.

4. The appearance of serious image processing.

Lots and lots of sharpening and probable variable contrast and lots and lots of screwing with the color curves has gone on here.

So whats the moral of this story ?   Seeing is not believing, and photography is easier than ever to fake, but sometimes even things that look fake may not be.

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Footnote:

For those who care about what actually happened here, not the photograph but the disaster, the best article I have found was in the NY TImes Magazine and can be read here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/26spill.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The story makes the point that most people assume that once the blowout happened that the destruction of the Horizon was inevitable. The article explains what happened and why it was not inevitable that the Horizon would have been destroyed.   The Horizon, it turns out, was filled with all sorts of mechanisms that would have allowed it (in all probability) to have survived the blowout without destruction or loss of life.  (In other words, the blowout underwater would still have happened, and with it the oil leak, but the Horizon would not have exploded as a result of it).

Reality vs Visual Effects: The Case of the Boeing Dreamlifter

From time to time, we will review photographs that are real but look like they might be visual effects and ask why that might be so.

In this case, unlike some others we will feature, it is not because of photoshop processing, or unusual lighting, or juxtaposition of elements, or any of a host of other things. In this case, it is because the key element itself just seems implausible. It is huge, it is unusual, it is quite beautiful. We do not see things of this scale around us every day. So when it shows up in real life it looks fake.  The essence of its implausibility is, I think, the cleanliness of its design, combined with the scale.

In a similar way, when I saw an Airbus 380 flying over Los Angeles on approach to LAX, it also appeared fake, probably because of its scale.

This might be an establishing shot of an airport that our character had just landed at. In the background, the giant Dreamlifter would casually be landing

Whereas this would be a more dramatic shot that illustrated a plot point.  Perhaps we are waiting for the Dreamlifter to deliver an important plot device.

But if this does look like a prop, perhaps it is from an older movie about the future.  Perhaps a movie from the 1950s, which might make it more reasonably in black and white.  It would need to be from a time when the future involved jet aircraft technology, instead of more modern anti-gravity or vertical thrust.  Here we have traditional jet technology circa 1990 combined with a futuristic and implausible over-sized body.

The pictures here were lifted from www.airlinereporter.com.

http://www.airlinereporter.com/2013/05/avgeek-photo-dreamlifter-lands-with-an-124-in-background/

http://www.airlinereporter.com/2013/03/boeing-747-dreamlifter-makes-emergency-landing-at-paine-field/

Reality vs Visual Effects: The Case of the F-15 Over Afghanistan

I regularly stumble across pictures from the real world that look fake to me.   I believe that if this picture was used in a movie, that is if there was a scene that looked like this, people would complain about the bad and obviously fake visual effects.

Here is a picture of a fighter being refueled at night over Afghanistan.

Examine the picture (click on it to enlarge it) and then read my notes below.   These are the notes that I would give the technical director of the shot to help him or her understand what some of the problems are.

An F-15E Strike Eagle from the 391st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, refuels Dec. 12 during a combat mission. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon)

1. The camera seems to be in an improbable position.  But it isn't, this is a camera on the refueling aircraft, completely normal.

2. The background (terrain) looks overly simple, it needs more detail.   That's how a lot of Afghanistan looks in winter at night.

3. The motion blur looks wrong.   But it isn't, the background is blurred because we are travelling fast over the ground, the airplane is not blurred because it has matched our speed.  The camera is at an oblique angle and the ground closer to the bottom of the picture is travelling "faster", e.g. more screen distance vertically, than the terrain in the upper part of the picture, hence the motion blur in the bottom of the picture is visibly more than the blur near the top, and this is correct.

4. You can see inside the cockpit.  That is correct, very high visibility these cockpits. And lots of illumination from the refueling boom.

5. The fighter itself is too low detail.  It looks like a model.   But it isn't.  F15s look like that from this point of view.  If you got up close you would see more detail, but it is deliberately supposed to be a sortof even grey from a distance (its a form of camouflage).

6. There appears to be a matte line around the front of the aircraft.   Yes there does appear to be a matte line, but it isn't.  It is the dark sky reflecting in the metal of the nose as it curves down.   It just looks like it has been outlined.

7. The lighting looks weird.   Its not your imagination, the lighting is weird.  We have a refueling boom with some sort of really bright (sodium?) light on it, a very bright moon illuminating everything with a blue-white light, reflections from the moon off the ground, illumination inside the fighter.  This is weird lighting.   That's just the way it is, or was, that night over Afghanistan.

In fact, it is a picture of a fighter at night over Afghanistan in winter being refueled.  It looks like that.   I think this is very amusing.

The original picture is at
http://www.strategypage.com/military_photos/military_photos_20121106215639.aspx