Posted on 05/26/2015 7:40:34 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Talk to anyone in my business and they'll all say the same thing: No matter how long you write stories and put them in the newspaper, you are never really sure which ones are going to strike a nerve.
What you think might be a Pulitzer-quality epic might draw only a nice call from Mom, while a simple tale tossed off on deadline causes an uproar, or an avalanche of praise. One legendary former investigative reporter at this paper wrote scores of stories that changed laws and saved lives, yet never did he get more mail than when he wrote about burying his cat.
And so it is with my June column on the amateur photographer, the widow and the eagle on a gravestone.
A quick recap: Amateur photographer Frank Glick was on his way to work when he drove through Fort Snelling National Cemetery early one morning. He spotted a bald eagle through the mist, perched on a gravestone, and snapped shots with his aging but ever-present camera.
Nice shot, he thought.
An acquaintance saw the photo and suggested that he see if the deceased soldier had any living relatives who might want it. Indeed, Maurice Ruch's widow was alive and well and delighted to receive a copy of the eagle watching over her beloved husband.
Glick's friend called me. Nice story, I thought.
Then it began.
Mail and calls from Minnesota, then Chicago, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina and finally, Afghanistan. The picture and story had gone viral. I noticed 11,000 people had recommended it on Facebook. I forwarded scores and scores of requests for reprints to Glick. Unfortunately, he had become ill and has been in the hospital off and on since the column ran. Mail piled up. (To reach Glick about the photo, e-mail him at liketophoto@yahoo.com.)
(Excerpt) Read more at m.startribune.com ...
The shadow of the tombstone the eagle is sitting on inconsistent with the other shadows. Doesn’t look right.
Photoshop for sure.
Actually there is literally a shadow of the eagle on top of the shadow of the tombstone he's sitting on, and it's fairly easy to see. And there are no artifacts around the outline of the eagle if you enlarge the photo. Clearly, the photo is real.
Well, I thought so too but I blew it up 10,000 times and looked very closely under a scanning electron microscope and you can clearly see that tucked under the bird’s wing is Obama’s birth certificate from Hawaii. So it’s obviously totally fake.
Obama doesn't have a Hawaii birth certificate - he was born in Kenya.
Your scanning electron microscope was just reflecting your eyelash.
There's a shadow in front of that tombstone. Why is it angled differently than the shadow of the tombstone with the eagle on it?
And why do many of the tombstones have essentially no shadows at all, and those two have very distinct shadows?
I would say that that's a clump of green grass, and not a shadow. Look two tombstones to the right of it, to one marked "Marion E." It has no green clump of grass, and it has a shorter shadow for the tombstone. I think this is a fairly long-distance shot that foreshortens the ground, which is not flat. As a result, with the rising sun and the foreshortened shadows over the visually undulating ground, some shadows are longer and some shorter from the perspective of the camera. IMHO.
Photo of eagle on Fort Snelling gravestone touches hearts, goes viral
Star Tribune ^ | August 10, 2011 | JON TEVLIN
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2762818/posts
oldie, but a goodie. I’m there every year. there are a lot of eagles around, so this is easily real.
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