“Ogopogo” Photos: Analytic Overlay
Posted by: Loren Coleman on June 10th, 2009
Yakcam sends this image along to share with Cryptomundo.
It overlays two of Sean Viloria’s photographs taken on August 23rd, 2008, just past Peachland, near Kelowna, British Columbia, previously discussed here and here.
Yakcam, who is a cinema prop and photo professional, used the shoreline to line up the photos; he gauged the distance between the boat and the anomaly appear to be within a similar distance to each other.
Take a look:
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
OK, I haven’t had my coffee yet. What is the significance of this overlay analysis?
This is a pretty revealing photo I think. I could be wrong, but what I see is that the x-y displacement of the “object” is approximately equal to the x-y displacement of the boat. Put more simply, the object is being towed by the boat, or maybe a living creature is following the boat and travelling at the same relative speed and direction as the boat. But looking at the left side of the photo, and considering the windsurfer theory, the windsurfer’s board is laying down and then gets pulled by the boat to get upright, as shown on the right hand side of the photo. Maybe this is a person who is just learning to windsurf, and needs a boost to get started? Granted, I know nothing about windsurfing, or if it would be common for a boat to assist. But for a windsurfer to be that far out into the lake, I would imagine that some assistance would be required.
And it just doesn’t make sense that an elusive, unknown cryptid that has managed to remain hidden from the world for many years to go around stalking boaters. The relative distance between the 2 objects remains the same after an equal amount of displacement, but for an elusive creature I would expect that to be the opposite, the creature would move in the opposite direction, or really just submerge to keep from being seen. And the boater would have probably noticed something as well. I can’t say for sure how long the boat is, but if you estimate that the boat is 20′, then doing some simple scaling suggests that the object is only maybe 100-150′ away from the boat.
I think Sean may just have a simple case of misidentification, accidental or on purpose, and got caught up in a whirlwind of attention.
Rainier,
I think the point is that the blob is moving at about the same speed as the boat; perhaps a little faster if it is farther away, as it would have to be if it is in the water. Its motion seems to correlate strongly with that of the boat, which suggests the kite theory may be on to something.
2 problems with this being in or on the water: (1) If this is a sailboard, it might not leave a wake that would be visible on this scale, but it appears to have fallen over in the left-hand (earlier) photo. It’s not likely the sailboard would have been righted and make such good speed to be in position for the 2nd photo — that would require it to move faster than the boat, which IS leaving a visible wake. (2) If this were the long neck of some lake monster swimming at a speed similar to that of the boat, it should also leave a wake.
What’s the time dilation between photo 1 & 2?
I really think it is a kite or windsock being flown behind the boat.
planettom – it could very well be, I think it could be a windsurfer, kite, or windsock. All of those options have more potential than Ogopogo, especially after this development with the photos.
Good work Yakcam, thanks for the effort!!!!!
Could this be a case of misdentification by Veloria??? Hmmm.
THANK YOU, Yakcam for looking at this photo with a critical/research eye!
cliff said:
cliff… I don’t mean to sound rude but, are you serious? If the velocity (magnitude and direction) of “creature” and boat were same or similar then joining the four points by straight lines would form a square. What we have here is a pronounced trapezoid! To say that both boat and “creature” are defined by the same velocity vector is a prime example of cooking data in order to close the subject with a conventional explanation such as, “boat pulls object via string”. In what way is cooking data less absurd than concluding that this is a lake monster?
What!? The distance between the so called “first” picture here(actually the 3rd posted on this site! -Where’s the second from the other post?)
is much further from the boat than the second…There is deception afoot here as the second piture is more zoomed in as evidenced by the wave size..It’s Not because the boat is closer! WAKE UP! AND if anyone has even a small understanding of depth perception, then the sailboard theory would make the person doing it about 30 feet tall! Wow, I guess we’ve got proof of giant sailboarding humans now!
I’m amazed by this whole Ogopogo flap on this site, everyone seems overly willing to see anything BUT what the witness says he saw. Amazing lack of trust in the fellow man (what a shame).
I went to a site full of sailboarding photo’s and saw nothing like the 3 that have shown up here, and on the previous post.
I don’t get it; to me there is way less reason to believe the popular theory’s than to leave it in the mystery category.
An overt willingness to bend over backward multiple times to discount something shows less in the way of “critical thinking” than it does of anything resembling courage to forge ahead in possible new discovery. This all reminds me of the completely discredited “Bell Theory” etc. cynicism disguised as objectivity lives! (what a shame)
towing a kite makes perfect sense.
I had to look hard at the photo, cliff’s is right if he said the word kite it would have mode more sense.
I read his comment and thought someone on a tube and thought where is the wake? and what about depth? the Z component to his XY his comment didn’t make sense without thinking about a kite.
but if it’s a Kite we can assume the same Z for both shots.
Yes, you’re right. It’s MUCH more reasonable to conclude that this is a bright purple leaping sea serpent than it is merely a windsurfer.
Ok, I finally had time to load this photo into CAD as an image and do some scaling to bring it up to size. Some assumptions had to be made about the size of the boat to scale the drawing in CAD, so I’m going off an assumption that the boat is 22′ long. That being said, I struck a line along the side of the boat, calculated a scaling factor, and scaled the entire photo, scaling everything proportionally. I’m working with only x-y coordinates (2D) here since this is a photo.
I’m also assuming that the starting point is the left hand side and both objects move from left to right.
Going forward it may help to print the photo and draw lines to label them to understand where I’m going with this.
The straight line distance between the boat and the object on the left is 145′. The straight line distance between boat and object on the right is 135′. A 10.0′ difference. (Draw a line from the object on the left to the boat on the left, then repeat for right side, then label with distances).
The straight line distance between the object on the left and the object on the right is 122′. The straight line distance between the boat on the left and the boat on the right is 141′. A 19.0′ difference. (Draw a straight line from object on left to object on right, then repeat for boats, then label the distances).
So, some might call me crazy for saying that the x-y displacements are approximately equal, but I’m also considering the fact that I’m dealing with a photo overlay, which may not be quite perfect for a number of reasons. Also, I can’t account for the Z axis in a 2D photo, but when you consider the Z axis the kite theory certainly starts to look appealing. The displacement of the boat can be accounted for with x-y coordinates, since the surface of the water is level, correct? But if the object is a kite, then one must consider the displacement along the Z-axis.
If the photo on the left depicts a kite on or near the surface of the water, and the photo on the right depicts a kite in flight, and the length of the string attached to the kite remains the same, then one would expect that the straight line distance between the boat/object on the right to be shorter than the distance between boat/object on the left as the kite gains altitude. Pretty simple geometry. And again, the distances between boat object were: right = 135′ < left = 145′ (and this makes sense for a kite gaining altitude being pulled behind a boat, with the length of the string remaining constant).
And it could still be a windsurfer too. We are dealing with overlayed photos here, so I wouldn’t expect the measurements to be perfect. I do recall saying that the displacements were “approximately equal”, and we’re only dealing with 10-20′ differences which could be a result of error in the overlay.
I’m no expert on overlaying photos, but I do overlay aerial maps quite a bit in my profession, and we see some pretty big discrepencies in that sometimes. Descrepencies in these photos could easily be caused by the photographer slightly changing position during the photos, or simply adjusting the zoom a bit, or both. You can still overlay the photos by finding a common point, but it will cause some error and things tend to get a bit out of proportion. So that has to be considered here, and the reason why every measurement should be seen as APPROXIMATE.
And as far as velocity vectors, it’s kinda tough to calculate velocity without knowing the time difference between the 2 photos. So I’m not even going to get into that. Looking at this from a 2D perspective in CAD tells me enough.
Anyway, after getting a chance to pull this into CAD I’m leaning more toward kite, but windsurfer is still likely as well, and that has alot to do with the photos of the boards used, the appearance of the object on the right and similarity to said boards, and the fact that some error is to be expected in the distances I got from the overlay, but I just don’t know how much.
Another thing to consider is that maybe the kite isn’t nearer to the water surface on the left photo, but is actually higher, it’s really hard to tell from the photo. But another way to look at this is just consider that on the left the kite is let out farther, and the photo on the right depicts the kite being pulled in and maybe the wind changed a bit?? There are many different ways that you can look at this. The Ogopogo theory assumes that both “objects”, left and right, are in the water. Same with the windsurfer theory. But kite/windsock throws the Z-axis displacement into the equation and that’s something that can’t be accurately determined by looking at these 2D photos.
Richard888 – And for the record, I’m not trying to “cook” any evidence so I can call case closed either, I’m just looking at the options with an open mind, considering all the possibilities. I looked at the photo with a naked eye and saw that the displacements were approximately equal. I realize that drawing it out doesn’t result in a perfect square, but do you seriously think that overlayed photos taken seconds apart by a human will be perfect? I considered the room for error in overlay initially and that’s why I said “approximate”. Looking at the photo with the naked eye does suggest some relationship between object and boat exists, for me anyway…
Their is something is the water other then the boat and on the pic on the right it is closer to the boat.
I can’t really ascribe the object’s shape/color to any reasonable animal, even a hypothetical long-necked mammal or reptile. I think this is goign to prove to be a manmade object (kite, kiteskier, something).
To me the boat looks like a toy and the monster looks photoshopped lol.
Have any of you considered a “kite surfer” that headed out onto the lake for a great ride until the wind died, got helped out by a passing boater rather than swimming a great distance, and flew his kite from the boat? They aren’t that easy to pack up in the middle of the lake….
Google images : kite boarding