After asking around I recieved yet another in depth look at the phototgraph. I won’t post the pic he sent, but basically I’ll tell you where to look. Take a look at the worker’s um, behind, 🙂 and if you zoom in on a photo editor, you can see a halo around the guy, as if it was smudged.
yellow arrows: compare the highlights on the man to the direction in which the chimney’s shadow is thrown. inconsistent, as ID4 pointed out about other parts of the scene.
red: the man looks as though he’s been composited into the image–he’s essentially been outlined…almost as if he was cut and pasted, and then smoothed over to take care of aliasing around the edges…most people don’t emit a glow by themselves 🙂
proportions: here’s something that has been overlooked.
(1) look at the size of the man compared to the size of the doors. a six foot hobbit hole? (but then again, the actors will be ‘cut in half’ via CGI techniques, so that might be a tad more likely than not)
(2) look at the size of the gates compared to the size of the doors. assuming the hole is roughly as tall as a hobbit (it’d have to be, if you look at the position of the window), the fence would come up to their knees. does that seem likely?
(3) look at the angle from which this picture was taken. I’m wondering how a spy got 20 or 30 feet into the air above this thing…he’d have to be standing on one hell of a hill.
Just more possible evidence for you to take into consideration. granted, I could be (and most likely am) wrong, and maybe the image is authentic. maybe some of it’s just bad compression or weird tricks of light…imperfections of nature, but it just doesn’t seem likely to me. when you spend enough time critizing CGI work, you take for granted everything you see in the real world…and I don’t see most of that in this picture.it just doesn’t feel right to me. my two cents. take it or leave it.
.evil bob.
Note from Xoanon: Now I’ve been getting some pretty heated emails ove rthis, and let me tell you, I wish and HOPE this image IS real! Because it rocks! So don’t think I’m trying to bash all your hopes.
