Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Gunslinger on November 15, 2004, 05:29:16 PM
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;)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,138620,00.html
(http://www.foxnews.com/images/144667/0_21_111004_fallujah2.jpg)
'Marlboro Man' Unfazed by Celebrity
Monday, November 15, 2004
PIKEVILLE, Ky. — A picture from Iraq has turned a young man into an instant celebrity.
Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller (search), a Marine from eastern Kentucky, has become known as the "Marlboro Man" after a photograph taken by a Los Angeles Times photographer and transmitted by The Associated Press was printed in more than 100 newspapers and shown on network television.
Miller, 20, is shown with smudged camouflage paint and a bloody scratch on his nose, a cigarette drooping from the side of his mouth. He was exhausted and grimy after more than 12 hours of nonstop fighting in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, scene of fierce battles over the past week..
Miller, a three-pack-a -ay smoker who is now being sought after by many women, says he doesn't understand what all the fuss is about. But his mother is thrilled.
Maxie Webber, of Robinson Creek in eastern Kentucky, said the close-up let her know that her son was OK.
"I just sat here and I thought, that's my son," Webber said. "I couldn't believe it."
Miller, a graduate of Shelby Valley High School, is serving with Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment in Fallujah.
He didn't know about the photo and his spreading fame until two Los Angeles Times staffers traveling with his unit told him about it.
"I was just smokin' a cigarette and someone takes my picture and it all blows up," Miller told them Friday.
The picture, which appeared in the Times on Wednesday, was taken on the afternoon after Charlie Company entered Fallujah under intense hostile fire.
Miller and his fellow platoon members had spent the day engaged in practically nonstop firefights, fending off snipers and attackers, and hadn't slept in more than 24 hours.
"It was kind of crazy out here at first," Miller says. "No one really knew what to expect. They told us about it all the time, but no one knows for sure until you get here."
Named after his great-great-great grandparents Joe and Nancy Miller, the first settlers in the area, he grew up in rural Jonancy. His father, James Miller, is a mechanic and farmer, and the young Miller grew up working crops of potatoes, corn and green beans. His mother is a nurse.
His mother said she stays home as much as possible in case he calls.
"I don't want to miss his call because you never know if that call will be the last one," Webber said.
She said she bought an answering machine in case Miller, the oldest of her three sons, calls while she's out. She has one message on the machine from Aug. 1.
"And when I get lonely, and it's been a few days, I play that tape," Webber said.
Webber said her son's decision to join the Marines (search) has changed the way she thinks about America.
"Until my son went into the Marines, I never really realized what that flag stood for — but now I do," she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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That guy is gonna get so much 'tang when he gets home.
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Ahem... ;)
http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=135701
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Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Ahem... ;)
http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=135701
Sorry GRUN, I was at work when that was posted. Didn't see it....technically though this is not a repost abut an alternate source posting ;)
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Youre not gonna weazel out of that easily mister. I expect the royalties caheck in the mail post haste!
;)
I'm just glad that now its abundantly clear how whacko those who NEED TO BELIVE that almost everything even sligtly noteworthy must be some conspiracy because they dont agree with the Iraq war or Bush...
Lance Cpl Miller!
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Or you could just be completely insane and derived that conclusion on your own Grunherz.
-SW
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Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
Or you could just be completely insane and derived that conclusion on your own Grunherz.
-SW
DOes that mean you were wrong? ;)
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About the cigarette being photoshopped, yes.
-SW
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Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
Or you could just be completely insane and derived that conclusion on your own Grunherz.
-SW
Maniac pretty much laid out his standard anti-USA conspiray theory view of why the photo would have been faked.
You were never so bold. Still I think its fair to say there was some motivation for your insistance that it was fake evwn after several of us stated much more plausible reasons involving various forms of overexposure to explain why the cigarette in the photo appeared as it did.
So I just put you in the same class as Maniac and his looney conspiracy theories for fun.. :p
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Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Still I think its fair to say there was some motivation for your insistance that it was fake evwn after several of us stated much more plausible reasons involving various forms of overexposure to explain why the cigarette in the photo appeared as it did.
Actually, it wasn't. It was a giant leap to a conclusion you always love brewing up.
Nevertheless, I stand by why I believe the cigarette looked photoshoped - which was the only stance I ever had.
-SW
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:)
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Originally posted by Gunslinger
Miller, a three-pack-a -ay smoker
Three packs a day! :eek: damn! :eek:
I mean, I know he's under a ton of pressure but how the heck does he still manage to fight! I smoke one pack a day and my lungs are dying after every shift in hockey!
Kudos to that guy. :aok
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The cigarette is retouched, without a doubt. And if you want I'll post the texture map of the photo proving it (high pass filter).
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Yeah Tweety, prove it.
lol.
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Seriously - ok - ill upload it to my web site.
But I'll tell you this, before it was a bitmap image it was a jpeg image as the jpeg algorythm artifacts are there. They are not however, on the cigarette. Meaning the the photo was loaded as a jpeg, retouched, and saved as a bitmap image. But for you Nuke, I'll upload the proof. It'll take me a few minutes.
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cigs are bad , mmmkay?
A tootsie pop needs to be photoshoped into the picture
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I'm going to have to upload the proof tommorow. I did it, but the file is 955kb. My webspace only allows 20 meg download per day so 20 hits on the message would kill that. I'll have to do a smaller section of the picture or either email you the proof.
In short jpeg leaves an unmistakable artifact. Its almost like a square with a checkerboard of gradients inside of it. Once shown to you, there is no mistake what is artifact and what is picture, because the artifact is a definite consistant pattern. Its almost like looking at something through tiled glass.
The picture posted was at one time saved as a jpeg, because the artifacts are all over the face. There is none over the cigarette, and in fact, the cigarette trunicates the jpeg artifacts it come in contact with. Someone loaded a jpeg image, painted the cigarette, and saved the file as a bitmap.
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when did you see it posted as a bitmap? Since it's a jpeg , how do you explain no jpeg artifacts on the cig?
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I'll host the image if you want. My email is in my cig. ( pun intended)
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Every jpeg save leaves another layer of artifacts. You can experiment yourself. Save a jpeg image over and over and you will see it deteriorate visibly without highpass filters. With the highpass filter, you can tell how many generations it was saved with a destructive algorithm.
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Well, I never saw the image posted as a bitmap as you stated.
You said that the cig had no jpeg artifacts.....yet the image was a jpeg. That maked no sense.
I'll host your "proof" if you want. Email me.
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The image being photoshopped, and the cig being photoshopped in, are different things.
(http://members.shaw.ca/cwharton/pics/cig1.jpg)
(http://members.shaw.ca/cwharton/pics/cig2.jpg)
The artifacts tweety is getting at are clearly there.
Now... maybe the cig wasn't photoshopped into place, but the image as a whole has undergone something. It doesn't take away from the fact that this guy was holding a cig in his mouth for real, but it also should give you pause in shouting down guys like SW who were only really ever saying "something is weird about this picture".
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Nash, I see many other "artifacts" in the image. Look at the right nostral, the clip on the helmet strap....
Tweety said the pic was originally a bitmap..... I never saw a bitmap of it.
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Originally posted by Nash
The image being photoshopped, and the cig being photoshopped in, are different things.
but it also should give you pause in shouting down guys like SW who were only really ever saying "something is weird about this picture".
I had no problem with him saying the pic looked photoshopped, heck most digital pictures are post processed in various ways.
However I did challenge SW when he went so far as to say that the cig was fake and that smoke was fake etc when there were obviously far more likely logical are reasonable explainations for what we saw...
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Ya know...
No matter how often people say "digital cameras have come of age".... I gotta sneaking suspicion that this could all be the result of one of those things.
I wouldn't be suprised to learn that this was a digital pic. And that the crud is due to it not handling the contrast between light and dark very well...
Whatever is going on here, it is by no means a basis to make assumptions about another's politics merely on account of them pointing this weirdnes out. That, at the very least, should be a given. It is a weird photograph.
Myself, I still shy away from digital cameras - I won't use them. Yet....
But I'd like the digital photographers here to weigh in on how those cameras treat light/dark edges.... and if they think that's what could be involved here.
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(http://www.imgmag.net/images/nagumo/stfupoint.gif)
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Nash, I think digital cameras have surpassed film.
But... how are you gonna post a film picture on the internet? It's gonna be digitized.
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Saur - you are awesome!
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Originally posted by Saurdaukar
(http://www.imgmag.net/images/nagumo/stfupoint.gif)
(http://members.shaw.ca/cwharton/pics/carusoshreck.gif)
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It was hard not to take politics into account when Mainac showed up and said the cig was added to make a defeated marine look like a tough guy.. And like I said I just lumped SW in with Maniac's conspiracy theories because he was being a jerk.
Personally I have always thought it was exposure issue on a digital camera, either due to flash or just because the cigarette is so much much brighter than everything else in the frame and so the meter would expose for the face and other dark areas. So the cigarette overexposed and blew the highligts which is why the cig has so little deatil and looks so stark.
That just seemed so obvious and simple an explaination of these picture elements to me that I questioned why people would insist that somebody went to all the trouble to fake it..
:)
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Good old fashined american stfu...
(http://www.home.no/norwolf/stfu.gif)
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It's just a pic on the internet....so it HAS to be digitally altered in some way.
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Originally posted by NUKE
It's just a pic on the internet....
No, its an LA Times photo.
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Originally posted by Montezuma
No, its an LA Times photo.
so how do you suppose you are able to see it on the internet? You think it may be digitized maybe?
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I know what yer getting at Nuke... Whether film or digital, the picture still needs to make its way into a computer, and then formatted in such a way as to be distributable over then net.
But you don't have to mess up pictures in quite this same way to do that.
Digital camera, cheap bellybutton scanner, Photoshop image "enhancement"... something happened to the picture.
Mere 'digitizing' doesn't mean anything... because I could snag a decent picture, digitize it, and post it here and you wouldn't see that particular kind of crud.
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something happened to the pic, no doubt about it.... but something had to happen to the pic in order for us to see it on the internet.
There are many artifacts in the jpeg. The pic and the cig are real imho.
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Damn.... nobody's debating that....
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They also photoshopped the smoke?
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once the wars were in the name of Jesus/Alla/others,
then they were about kings personal issues,
then it was about idiology and forms of goverment,
these days it seems wars are fought for the media and the entertainment of the viewers at home.
Bozon
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It wasn't a marlboro the guy had in his mouth, 't was a joint... that's why they photoshoped it. Well.... that's my theory :)
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>>Tweety said the pic was originally a bitmap..... I never saw a bitmap of it.
<<
It was manipulated in bitmap format. Certain tools (like the airbrush or smudge tool in photoshop) leave distinctive finger prints because they are mathematicaly perfect in dispersion from the center of the tool, and nothing in nature is. Its a little involved unless you are familiar with the jpeg algorithm, but its possible to make very accurate guesses as to what a pixel looked like before being saved in jpeg (or any destructive algorithm, if the algorithm is known).
But I shouldn't have brought it up because I am not prepared to go into it here.
Disregard the previous posts. I think the image was retouched. Why? I have no clue.
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Originally posted by TweetyBird
Disregard the previous posts. I think the image was retouched. Why? I have no clue.
I'm by no means a PS expert, but my WAG is the cig looks dodged and over sharpened.
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Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Maniac pretty much laid out his standard anti-USA conspiray theory view of why the photo would have been faked.
You were never so bold. Still I think its fair to say there was some motivation for your insistance that it was fake evwn after several of us stated much more plausible reasons involving various forms of overexposure to explain why the cigarette in the photo appeared as it did.
So I just put you in the same class as Maniac and his looney conspiracy theories for fun.. :p
LoL!
Its all in YOUR mind Grun!
The whole debate was "why would anyone photoshop in a cigg in his mouth"
And i said : with it he look victorious, without it he look defeated.
The discussion was about WHY someone would do it, i never said someone DID it. I did however say that it looked photoshoped.
:lol
:rofl
:aok
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And how does that criticize anything I said in the quoted statement about yoiu having a lonney consipracy theory as to why the pic might have been faked? You clearly said it might have been faked to make him look victorious instead of defeated.. That was your theory of why the photo could have been faked.. Wasnt it Maniac?
What exactly are you critizing here?
Talk about things being in your mind.. LOL :)
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Look where the cigarette touches the lips. On the left side of the cigarette, there is a wrinkle on the lip. Look at that wrinklle. Make a copy of it even. Then compare that wrinkle to others in the face.
Its tooled. For something that doesn't matter, its a lot of discussion. But I don't think press photos should be retouched for whatever reason.