Incredible Baseball Tintype Auction Yesterday

[benjulmag]

Originally Posted by bmarlowe1

The very same Jerry Richards appeared on an episode of a memorabilia show on the history channel and quickly concluded that a photo of an old man could not depict Jesse James because the ear did not match that in a photo of a young Jesse James.

Forensic professionals can be hired to either tell you what they think or to take a side (like a lawyer). The arguments you made, in my view, are kind of boiler plate when the photo details aren't supportive of your point of view. Also they presume that I have no aptitude for visualizing how the appearance of complex 3-D objects are affected by lighting and shadow. As to aptitude, I think I have proven otherwise. My first career choice was commercial art and I did take lessons.

>>taking into account how certain facial features can change over time, coupled with the margin of measurement error caused by photographic process, resolution, lighting, changes in appearance during different photographic poses,...

So, if pose, shadow and unspecified distortion can so easily fool the eye, couldn't that make someone who is not Anson look like Anson?

Jerry Richards was hired to tell me what he thought without any skewing of his opinion. In regard to another item on which I hired him to opine, he told me that one was not what it was represented to be. He also told me with respect to the item for which he supported my conclusion that had he collected that sort of thing he would have bought it. It is my view he was being honest when telling me this.

Photography as applied to photo ID is very different than art applied to photo ID. IMO a background in one does not give one expertise in the other.

And yes, just as factors that can make one appear not to be someone he/she is, those same factors can make someone appear to be someone he/she is not. My point is that there is uncertainty when one does this kind of photographic comparison, and the results typically are not either "it is" or "it isn't", but scales of probability in between that then invite one to consider other factors. That is all I have ever said about this comparison. You are the one making the absolute statement of a definite conclusion, that respectfully I do not agree with.