Heavyweight Digital Image Expert Weighs In On Drones, Calling Hoax (Again!!)

Back in May last year (2007) The Paracast broadcast their regular podcast with Gene Steinberg & David Biedny, on it they covered the California Drone Flap. This was a fairly discreet offering and passed under the radar of a lot of people who are interested in the Drones. Proponents of the Drones are quick to shout that no known professional digital image analysts are willing to go on record with any kind of judgement regarding the images, well enter David Biedny, as far as expert analysts go they don't come with credentials much more impeccable than Biedny's!!

David Biedny has been interested in the hard science aspects of the paranormal world since youth, and especially due to his formative years spent in Caracas, Venezuela . He has personally witnessed the range of the absurd to the truly unexplainable in the realm of paranormal phenomenon, and these experiences have forged the foundation of his curiosity and desire to uncover the truth of the limitations of our knowledge of the wondrous possibilities of nature and the Universe.

Listen to the relevant section of the Paracast.

David Biedny on why he thinks the Californian Drones are hoax.

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"David Biedny is the President & Technical Director of IDIG, Inc. he is a leading digital effects, graphics and multimedia expert. His writing, educational efforts, multimedia and special effects work have enjoyed global exposure. He is considered by many longtime industry players to be one of the technical and creative pioneers of personal computer-based multimedia.

Biedny was formerly President and Technical Director of Incredible Interactivity Inc., a pioneering New York based firm which created multimedia projects and products for companies such as General Motors, Knoll International, Apple Computer, HBO, American Express, The American International Group and AT&T, among others. In recent years, he has participated as a project director/interface designer/consultant for a variety of CD-ROM/software projects, including BeInfinite Infinite FX(TM) for Adobe Illustrator (special effects plug-in product, first commercially shipping plug-in for Illustrator in the U.S.), Penthouse Interactive (Project Director), The Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties! CD-ROM (Biedny is a technical advisor for Rockument, Inc ., the publisher) and Quantum Gate I and II (Biedny is on the advisory board of Hyperbole Studios ).

Biedny has also been a key interface/feature consultant/beta tester for many of the major multimedia tools currently on the market. His involvement with computer graphics includes participating as a feature and interface consultant for key applications such as ImageStudio (the first mass market digital retouching software for the Macintosh platform), PixelPaint, ColorStudio (Biedny conceived the Shapes vector graphics capabilities unique to that product), Altamira Composer (which was acquired by Microsoft) and Photoshop (David was user #4, spec'd many of the key features of the product, and was included in the credits for Photoshop 1.0). Most recently, David conceived of the name for Eric Wenger's ArtMatic texture generation and animation software. David was also a seed site for the original Power Macintosh computer, and has been credited with helping conceive of the "Power Macintosh" name. David is an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop, and IDIG is an Adobe Authorized Training Provider.

Other technology consulting clients also include Landor Associates, LucasArts Entertainment, Microsoft, Broderbund Software, Ressmeyer Starlight (Roger Ressmeyer is the world's leading space photographer) and Kraft Robot. IDIG is also involved in designing graphics for a variety of WWW pages, including the infamous Surfing Monkey site and Chuck Farnham's Weird World (both recently taken offline), among others. IDIG has also recently produced graphics and processed digital imagery for the McGuire Real Estate web site, one of the larger real estate agents in the Bay area.

Biedny was a founding editor of MacUser and Macintosh Today, formerly a Contributing Editor for MacWorld , New Media and the Macromedia User Journal and, and has written for Windows Sources, ID, MacUser, MacWeek, The New Media Showcase, Morph's Outpost on the Digital Frontier and Computer Graphics World, among others. He co-authored, with Bert Monroy, the award winning, best selling Official Adobe Photoshop Handbook , published by Bantam/Random House, as well as Adobe Photoshop: A Visual Guide (published by Addison-Wesley). His newest book, Photoshop Channel Chops (co-authored with collaborators Bert Monroy and Nathan Moody), is published by New Riders Publishing. He is currently producing a leading Photoshop video series, Photoshop Inside & Out™ , and is hosting the definitive Photoshop web portal, Photoshop Central .

He has taught Interactive Multimedia Design and Advanced Imaging for the MFA program of the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, and rejoined the faculty in the spring of 1993 as an ISDN-based TeleTeacher from his Marin home. Recently a faculty member of the San Francisco State University Multimedia Studies Program, Biedny has been a top-rated lecturer and speaker at the Kodak Center for Creative Imaging, Seybold Seminars, Stanford University, UCSC Multimedia Extensions Program, Pratt, MacWorld and NCGA, among others."[1]

After reading the above I'm sure you can appreciate that David Biedny is possibly one of the most qualified people around today regarding digital imaging and so his opinion undoubtedly carries more weight than your average hobbyist and indeed more than the vast majority of professionals.

Just recently he posted a comment at the ATS forum (3rd May 2008) on the Drone thread stating that:

“I'm one of the people who instantly saw that these images were fakes, CG elements composited onto photographic background plates. Jeff Ritzmann & I could immediately tell that the first image was a total fake, and the silly story from "Chad" made if painfully clear that this was all nonsense, perhaps perpetrated by C2C & LMH in order to drum up some traffic and interest. Subsequent images were increasingly more ridiculous. From the fact that these images don't match up to any morphology we've seen in over 60 years of publicly reported UFO sightings, to the childish typefaces, the obvious rendered look of the "craft", the lighting mismatch between the CG element and the background plates, what more do you need?”[2]

So now we have David Biedny & Jeff Ritzman to add to the list of at least another five professionals in the digital imagery/analysis field who say that these images are obvious fakes.

Mr Steve Reichmuth (Mufon - Northern California, SSD - Alameda / Contra Costa Co.) announced in May of last year that Mufon had contacted two outside specialists to undertake an evaluation of these images, these are Mr Steve Neil who has and continues to do computer generated images for the History channels television program 'UFO Files'.

And a Mr. Marc D'Antonio, who owns and operates a business in Connecticut named FX Models. Also, I personally exchanged several emails with Mr D'Antonio last year and as well as the original images, Mr. D'Antonio was also convinced that all of the subsequent images as well as those of the antigrav device which was included in the Isaac documentation were obvious fakes.

Steve Reichmuth wrote, “Marc is a former MUFON Field investigator, and has taught Astronomy for a number of years at a local area east coast college. Both Marc & Steve I would consider well grounded and I would consider them both 'non-skeptics' related to 'UFO's. They think UFO's are 'real' and likely 'extraterrestrial' in origin. Marc works with computer generated images every day. Both experts state all images of this object are clearly fakes. Mr. D' Antonio is one of my valued expert contacts I network with in studying UFO photographs. He has volunteered to assist in future cases.

Marc examined the Coast to Coast images days earlier week (May 10) earlier. I contacted Marc again when this latest witness report was posted on CMS shortly later (May 12, 2007). Attached images have been studied by these two friends in the Special visual computer effects industry. They both independently state this object is clearly a CG fake.”[3]

Again by way of Mufon and Steve Reichmuth we have been told that that Dr Bruce Maccabee (optical physicist employed by the U.S. Navy and leading UFO researcher) and Mr. Jeff Sainio also believed that the images were faked, Steve Reichmuth wrote:

“Later with permission from Mufon, our own Mufon photo consultants, Dr. Bruce Maccabee, and Mr. Jeff Sainio. It was felt important for MUFON experts to also verify the other experts to either confirm or dispute everyone's findings. The result was unanimous the images were fakes. Interestingly, peer review brought out new different reasons among the main reasons they were regarded as hoaxes. So apparently, there are a number of 'red flags' as to why the images are untruthful being claimed to be authentic. The analysis was objective, knowing all these experts opinions lean toward that UFO's being likely alien craft. Two of the outside experts are even possible abductees, so their 'slant' if anything is pre-existing.... it is towards UFO's being extraterrestrial in a very personal way. Still, the outside Mufon experts emphatically stated they were most definitely bogus.”[4]

Again I've personally contacted Dr. Maccabee myself and as recently as the 16 th April 2008 he confirmed that he's highly suspicious of the authenticity of the images, and James Carrion (Director of Mufon) also confirmed to me personally that Dr Maccabee and Mr. Jeff Sainio were in fact consulted by Mufon in their capacity as digital imaging experts to offer an analysis of the Drone images.

And lastly we have Kris Avery who has stated his belief that the Drone images were faked since they first appeared, you will probably recognise the name as he's the person who along with fellow forum member, “DroneOnline” created the Drone music video which was such a success that it led to many people who were unfamiliar with the Drone case claiming that he was actually the original hoaxer. Kris is a CGI artist based in the UK and his business website, “Kaptive Studios” may be viewed here.

I guess the question is how much expert analysis will suffice before it is accepted?

Sources:
[1] IDIG - Personnel (David Biedny)
[2] ATS Forums
[3] Steve Reichmuth email to UFOUpdates
[4] UFOResearcher.com

Whitley Strieber Revives, “Drone UFO Flap?”

Whitley Strieber recently authorized the following email to be sent to his “Unknown Country” subscribers list (6th December 2007) and it was emailed on his behalf.

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This morning at 4:53 AM, Whitley Strieber saw a drone over Santa Monica , California . The Striebers are in California seeing friends, and Whitley has sent me the following email, with permission to publish it. He will write a journal entry about his experience that will be posted on Saturday, December 8.

And remember, there are a lot of people out there lying about the drones and trying to debunk them. But these people ignore ONE THING: Linda's interviews with credible eyewitnesses. Do not be deceived about this.

This was in his email:

“Well, in one sense the drones mystery is solved because at 4:53 this morning, I saw one.

I had an extremely restless night, full of complex and astounding dreams that I will record in a journal on my website. They also involved my book the Key and the crop circles, and have led me to a very clear understanding that there is a new level of consciousness available to us now. The dreams lasted from about 3:00 to the moment I woke up and saw the thing outside, which was at exactly 4:53. (I know the times because I sent one of my agents an email at 2:47 about a business matter, then went to bed and was shortly asleep. When I saw the drone, I was looking across the bedroom toward the window, with my wife's lighted clock just visible below the window.)

I woke up lying on my side, and saw the thing moving just below and in the bottom edge of the clouds. It was stormy. The object was enormous, and from where I was lying it must have been no more than a few hundred feet overhead. It appeared almost level with the line of the roof that is visible outside my window. It was moving toward our building at a stately pace, gliding easily, like a dirigible. I had the impression that it was quite large, but obviously, no way to tell for sure. Because of the clouds, I did not see the characteristic tall antennae on it, but I did see structure that looked a lot like what the bicyclists photographed. I immediately woke Anne up and went to the window. But we could not see it from the window.

I looked for a while, trying to see if I could spot some edge of it in the clouds. It had not been moving fast at all, so there was reason to believe it was still there. Not seeing it, I went to the dresser and got my cellphone, which has a camera in it, and put it beside the bed. I then lay down and turned over to the same position I had been in when I first saw it--and there the thing was again, clearly visible just below the cloud cover. Now it was much closer to the house. When I moved my head to get up again, I could no longer see it. When I returned to the original angle, I could see it again. This time, it was gliding west, toward the ocean, only its lower structure visible in the clouds. I opened the cellphone, in an attempt to take a picture of it from that angle, but by then it had passed beyond the edge of the window. I saw nothing more of it, but there is no question in my mind at all but that they are real.”

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At the time of writing this (Sunday 9th December) his journal has still to be updated and still shows the last entry to be the 27th November. Whitley Strieber has always said he can't prove (and as such didn't know) that the Drones were real and that perhaps the lessons learned from the full experience are more important than the nuts and bolts physical reality of the craft.

Well that all seems to have changed with this latest revelation, the first line of Whitley's recent email states:

“Well, in one sense the Drones mystery is solved because at 4:53 this morning, I saw one.”

And the last line of the email reaffirms this by stating that:

“There is no question in my mind at all but that they <the Drones> are real.”

There really is so little information to be gleamed from this brief correspondence that's partly why I've held off posting anything about it, but since Whitley's self-imposed deadline of the 8th December has come and gone with no sign of him updating his personal journal I thought it prudent to mention it.

Personally I do have great difficulties in believing that the entire account is simply nothing more than a fabrication, and I'm interested to see which path Whitley is planning on taking, hopefully it's not just the path that leads to his bank…..

IsaacCaret – Dragonfly Drone – UFO – Big Basin – High Resolution Image Update!!

This really is turning into the UFO story that refuses to disappear, at least without a fight!!

However, this time it's not a new sighting or information, but rather a release of a high resolution image from Linda Moulton Howe (LMH). It's one of the original 12 Big Basin Drone UFO images, and to be honest it's not before time.

Most people who have been following the Drone UFO case have been chomping at the bit for further details and many, many forum members have been constantly pestering LMH for the 12 original images from the Big Basin/Drone/UFO sighting in the high resolution that LMH publicly stated she had in her possession.

In fact (as UFOCasebook's Latitude pointed out) it was probably the forum user, “Ivo” over at the OMF that spurred the release as he emailed LMH the day before saying that forum user OnTheFence (a well respected and knowledgeable authority on the images) had made a connection between the Isaac linguistic primer and the Big Basin Drone UFO but was unable to further any investigation without the release of the hi-res images.

So LMH obliged with the release of ONE image. This was sent simultaneously to several forum members from several forums who had expressed an interest. However scant an offering this may seem it has appeared to manifest itself as the, “Missing link” between the Drone UFO sightings and he Isaac/CARET documentation.

The reason for this is a striking resemblance between Isaacs's linguistic primer and a couple of the panels on the Big Basin Drone. This is evident in the image below.

For bandwidth and display reasons I haven't used the original image, but it may be downloaded here.

While personally I feel there are a couple of problems with this catalogue of events, it seems the vast majority of people who are interested in this case have accepted the connection as definitive proof. Granted the vast majority I refer to were 100% believers before the release of this image, but nevertheless the new image has been embraced as, “The real deal” by many people who have followed the Drone UFO's.

And I must admit the similarities are certainly too much to simply dismiss out of hand, as can be seen in the image below.

So the plot thickens as the mystery deepens…………….

Mother and daughter describe Tahoe UFO sighting

Mother and daughter describe Tahoe UFO sighting (Tahoe Daily Tribune)

Charles Sizemore and Jeff Munson ( jmunson@tahoedailytribune.com)
July 6, 2007

Dawn Raimond, a 41-year-old resident of Round Hill, saw something strange in the sky over Lake Tahoe from the deck of her home on the evening of June 19. According to Raimond, she was sitting outside on her deck at about 11:40 p.m. looking at the stars, when she noticed moving lights in the sky.

"The stars starting moving," she said.

The lights were arranged straight up and down, according to Raimond, and then started spreading out. Raimond called her daughter, Raven, 20, outside to witness the strange lights. As the lights came closer to their house, the women were able to make out a strange object with two lights.

"It wasn't an airplane," Raven said.

The dark, triangle-shaped object traveled very fast across the lake toward their home, and then slowed down as it approached her house, Dawn said. The object was completely silent, making no noise. The object came within about 500 feet of their house, according to Dawn, when it came to a stop above the trees. The lights then began getting wider and wider, and then starting fading, Dawn said.

"It disappeared right in front of our eyes," said Dawn.

Dawn isn't sure what the object was, but is sure it wasn't an airplane. People have suggested to her that it may have been an airplane from the Naval Air Station in Fallon, or that perhaps it was a stealth fighter, but Dawn isn't convinced.

"I know what they look like and (there's) no way it was that. It was much bigger than that," Dawn said. What she is sure of is that she saw the object, and that she wasn't seeing things. The Raimonds' sighting comes just over a year after South Lake Tahoe resident Allan Brown saw, and videotaped, a UFO over Lake Tahoe . As reported on June 16, 2006, in the Tahoe Daily Tribune, Brown videotaped an object "dancing in the sky" over the lake in the early morning hours last June.

The latest sighting also comes as people recognize the 60th anniversary of the events of July 8, 1947, in Roswell , N.M. , when personnel from the Roswell Army Airfield issued a press release that they had found the remnants of a "flying disc" that had crashed on a ranch nearby. It was later that day that the Air Force corrected the RAAF, saying that it had been a downed weather balloon that was found. Over 30 years later, Major Jesse Marcel, who had been involved with the incident near Roswell, came forward to say that he believed the US military had covered up the recovery of an alien spacecraft, thus sparking the controversy that lives on today as to what was actually found on that ranch near Roswell.

For more information on Allan Brown's sighting last year and to see his video, visit www.TahoeDailyTribune.com, and do a search for "UFO."

Source: Tahoe Daily Tribune

Download the Isaac/CARET UFO letter and documentation as PDF

Download the Isaac documentation condensed into a couple of pdf's by Clicking/ Here (Zip File)

There's only two PDF's, the letter and the scanned/photocopied documents, but I left the scans at their original size which makes it very easy to zoom right in on the finest of details. Also it makes looking through the typed photocopies a lot easier.....

California UFO Flap 2007 – Chad UFO, Lake Tahoe UFO, Rajman1977 UFO, Big Basin UFO, Isaac UFO Explanation (CARET – Fortunecity.com)

The California UFO Flap Of 2007 Continues Unabated!!

To read about the previous Californian UFO sightings then please follow the links below. (You can also discuss the sightings or express your theories and views at our UFO Forums (HERE)

• Chad UFO (Coast To Coast),
• Lake Tahoe UFO (MUFON),
• Rajman1977 UFO (Capitola UFO – Flikr Account)
• Big Basin UFO (UFOCasebook – Stephen)
• Isaac And His UFO Explanation (CARET – Fortunecity.com)

(The Isaac/CARET UFO) Explanation of the Recent "Strange Craft" Sightings

We have another name to add to the increasing list of witnesses/informants of the current Californian UFO Flap. The informants name is Isaac and he adds another complex twist to the already convuluted story, which until now comprised solely of witness statements and photographs the legitimacy of which are still being hotly contested.

The California UFO flap is turning into the UFO story that won't go away, just when even the believers of this particular sighting were starting to doubt the validity and the integrity of the witnesses (mainly due to the lack of verifiable information.)

And once again, right on cue we have an infinitely more detailed report, this time proffering reversed alien technology as the answer. Isaac also includes an incredibly lengthy and detailed correspondence as a, “companion to numerous document and photo scans.”

Indeed, if only a small percentage of what Isaac claims is true, then the disclosure of such information will have effects that will change the way we perceive the world, for ever!!

And that's not to mention that the information has profound implications for every part of society, from Physicists to Religious leaders!!

Isaacs account is too lengthy for a Blog post, so to read the account and view the scans and photos, visit Our UFO Forums (HERE)

And here's a little taste of what's on offer............................