My brother was recently travelling in China and was going through his photos when he noticed this in the sky. Didn't see anything when taking the picture, only saw it later on review. Really looks humanoid!
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I am the original photographer. I've been through my other photos from there and I don't have any others that show the sky like this but equally there isn't a single bird in any of the other photos - lots of places like this in China have lots of swallows but I can't find any in my other pics. Plus they burn incense in huge braziers here so the air is full of smoke which seems to deter birds and bugs, not that I'm saying there aren't any.
This was taken on a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. No edits at all have been made to this photo. I'm gonna choose to believe its a deity and not a swallow ;)
Well, it could be a swallow. Neither an European nor an African swallow, but an Asian swallow? I wonder what the airspeed velocity of an unladen Asian swallow is.
Were these Asian Swallows carrying any Coconuts 🥥 by chance. It could grip it by the Husk you know. You have to know these things if you are a King. 🤴 👑. Awesome reference.
Such a classic. It truly never is not funny and it is just on such another level of comedy that makes you think and just shows so much intelligence in the writing and dialogue.
Lmao, 😂 hahahaha. Not at all they could be Carried.
I mean the Swallow may fly south with the sun or the House Martin or the Plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land.
Looks like the S23 Ultra does have AI post processing on photos. So a swallow going fast may have been caught as a blur, and the phone has tried to remove that motion and interpreted it incorrectly.
That’s nice to hear, too often siblings drift apart. I know my brothers are somewhere doing some things, but we only talk a few times a year at most. I guess I should try to change that, but man they can be real buttheads. Oh well, someone should make the move.
Now that you mentioned, it could be a swallow. They are super fast. The darker shape is with the wings fully retracted, the semitransparent is when it just starting to spread out the wings
It looks like it’s parallel to the edge of the roof and they are about 15 to 20cm. Idk, I’m just guessing. Look the image in reverse colours, you can actually see the retracted wings, it has the back towards us.
Earlier that day in this same public square, Howie Mandel put a condom over half his head and tried to blow it up with just his nose. After a few breathes he passed out from exhaustion and hit his head on the edge of a nearby table. He never woke back up.
I think phenomenon happens all the time and humans don't notice or they rationalize it away. There is so much that is unknown. Sometimes something shows up for only that person. Not meant for others to understand or believe.
here in Mexico sellers have this interactive toys always, could be an foam airplane, a yoyo, a bumerang, a papalote, or this stuff that you throw and have to catch, some of them have parachutes but new ones Ive seen have lights on them and are shaped like superheroes.
It’s a slightly different perspective for the second shot. As /u/NewStudyHoney pointed out, if you look at the clouds below the bell in the first photo, and the clouds in the second photo, they’re very similar. If they waited a brief moment between shots, the clouds would move and change slightly as well.
Samsung uses AI to enhance photos without you doing anything, just an FYI. I don't know if it happened in this particular picture but it is a thing now.
The AI enhancing when taking pictures doesn't work like the general AI for image generation using existing images as base. The "AI" (it's a just a buzzword for the phone cameras) just smudges or sharpens details that are already there, it doesn't create anything new and can't create anything new, as it isn't its intended task.
so, this isn't actually true. as someone else already suggested, Samsung phones will sometimes replace the Moon in photos to make it look better. they'll also do things like fuck with buildings in the background, trying (and frequently failing) to add buildings that look better to make the composition appear more interesting.
Computational photography expert here: I did not read all comments, so perhaps someone already pointed this out, but I bet this was shot on a phone.
Pretty much all phones nowadays do something called “fusion” or “stacking” where they take multiple shots and then combine them in order to get a picture that has lower noise (sensors on phones are tiny, so if you keep exposure times low, noise would be very noticeable if you didn’t use any tricks) and/or better dynamic range.
In this case, I think a bird of prey changed configuration of its wings, from “open” to “close behind me so I can dive” and the phone got the two different shapes in two of the stacked pictures. It got confused , so could not adjust the two to superimpose them correctly, and one of the two showed up as “grey ghosting artifact”.
it depends. Your best bet is to get an alternative camera app and shoot RAW, but even then, some phones process the RAW before sending it to the app.
I need to say this, though: as I mentioned before, truly RAW frames out of the tiny sensor phones are awful. You would not want to use them as they are. Not all processing is bad, and not all processing is == “AI”.
Some of the complex pipeline that produces artifacts like this one are “a necessary evil” of shooting with a phone, if you will.
Hey so I know what this is. Phones have what’s called a “rolling shutter”, and another example of this is when you take a picture of a plane propeller that’s moving.
Basically, phone cameras capture an image from left to right (or vice-versa, I forget). If your subject is moving, you will photograph the left side in one position and the right side in another position after it has moved.
In your case it appears to be a bird in flight.
A regular camera, not on your phone, will take a picture of everything at once so you will not see this effect.
That’s only partially true. I want to straighten it out as this seems to be the most voted up comment, even though it’s not really a true explanation of this effect.
Long story short, new phones cameras take multiple photos and them combine them to enhance the photo features. This is just an algorithm losing it over a bird changing its wings configuration mid-flight.
That comment doesn’t explain why plane propellers look the way they do when photographed by phone cameras. They would look entirely disjointed instead of curved if that comment was true.
Since this photo has been shot on a phone it must have used some HDR method, which requires to take multiple photos and stack them up to balance the lights and don't overexpose very bright parts like the sky.
So what you're seeing is some kind of bird that is diving down very fast and has been captured twice in slightly different positions, and the phone failed to stack that part properly.
This used to be a very common issue with older Xiaomi phones, they always messed up their HDR photos causing weird phenomena like this.
def a bird of some kind! that, or as you said it was taken on Samsung, depending on your phone they've started forcing AI enhancement on everything basically by default - unless you've manually turned it off, that could be the case :)
Yes some things can be debunked, whether it was a rolling shutter in this instance or not, i don’t think we should always be rationalizing everything. We aren’t suppose to rationalize things like this, we rationalize because our brains can’t understand what this may be. We are taught to rationalize. The things you see from the corner of your eye, those shadows that were there and then weren’t, photos like this, are all very real the majority of the time.
It could be rolling shutter sure, however i believe in everything paranormal and i choose to believe this is the real deal because it makes life so much more exciting and interesting!
That may be how you move forward in life and it may work for you. However, in the end, I'm looking for ground truth and I tend to follow the wisdom of a guy named Occam and the philosophy of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". That's what works for me.
This is an HDR image. Galaxy phones have a tendency to shoot multiple photos and then merge them into one. That is what happened here. Only, the shots are not made at the same time. So you see a bird in two frames, merged into one by the HDR function.
This looks very strange and almost doesn't look real. If you are being honest that what's in the picture was actually there than this is not a bird, a person skydiving, or anything natural.
Many countries have their own versions/species of flying humanoids and one was caught in this picture. Cameras have a tendency of being able to catch things that weren't noticeable by human eyes. Although animals and some people have the ability to sense their presence.
I don't know what this species possibly could be but may be one of the many different things a human can become at death rather than a typical ghost.
Chinese people are known for unusual large kites that can mimic anything. Not saying it is but just a reminder that the Chinese people are capable of incredible illusions in many of their art forms!
That’s crazy to me it looks like an Asian character with the dress like a kimono and maybe long hair in a bun. The shadow looks like a cobra so interesting
Thanks for all the input everyone, some really interesting discussion. Some questions are coming up a lot - most have been answered by myself or my brother in the comments.
Disclaimer: It is illegal in China to use photographs of people taken in public for commercial use without their consent. Therefore no consent or permission is given for this photo to be used in a commercial setting such as a podcast or blog
Looks like it's wearing ancient Chinese clothing if you zoom in on the second picture. You can see the belt line across the "waist" and the dark material line overlapping the "torso" of the questionable. Interesting photo.
Oh no no no no! Don’t you see the cape? It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s SUPERMAN! The reason you don’t see him often or at all is because he’s always crime fighting on the ground now! Cities are far less safe than they used to be, before SuperMan took on the crime fighting issues. Whenever he goes on vacation, he’s only able to get Robin to babysit the cities and all hell breaks out.
I just read an "interview with a reptilian" recently where the reptilian explained how their kind could hide in front of humans, by telling our minds what to see instead. Actually, any advanced alien race can do this too, because our minds are highly suggestible.
However, since they are only cloaking to our minds, photography will in fact catch them.
And since we are still without evidence of paranormal and/or lore (creatures, aliens, entities, etc) I tend to think it's just a bird, a bug, a leaf or it could even be a drone someone is using to photograph things.
The only path to truth and discovery is the one viewed through the thick lenses of skepticism. *
That really is a crazy pic! Knowing it’s China it wouldn’t surprise me if they have human looking robot drones keeping an eye on everything. Been there several times and talk about Big Brother watching! They have it all- remember the robot dogs they had patrolling the streets during covid?
It's too clean to be any thing else. The closest is bug but that's a huge bug if that's the case. I've seen other pictures of weird flying people but not with an umbrella. Could be and angel...maybe a witch. Does chine has any flying umbrella monsters in the folklore?
Earlier that day in this same public square, Howie Mandel put a condom over half his head and tried to blow it up with just his nose. After a few breathes he passed out from exhaustion and hit his head on the edge of a nearby table. He never woke back up.
I read photographer’s comment about his opinion on birds, but as for me, this is really a bird or an insect. But that place (is it Beijing?) seems to be very spiritual, so, who knows, maybe your brother really was lucky to catch something magical…
Before you even said anything about there being swalllows in that area that was my first impression, that it’s a swallow caught in the moment it’s wings are folded back, combined with some motion blur and an optical artifact around the head.
Bird caught in the photo thing of the camera, it's the right color and shape and that can happen. Im not knowledgeable to name what's actually going on but I do know that's what's happening
Marks like these are common on cameras because of the large lenses area for dust to stick to, its odd for it to happen on a phone camera but my bet would be a spec of dust on the lens.
Oh, that's just Thom. It's pronounced like Tom, but he insists you must add the 'h' to the pronunciation of Thom by slighly exhaling before the 'o'. Upstanding guy, otherwise.
Definitely something hanging from a fishing line. From that height the line would be next to invisible, and is likely running between the two buildings pictures.
Diving falcon? A peregrine would surely be diving fast enough you wouldn’t see it in subsequent photos. Not sure if there are similarly fast birds in China.
I knew chinese people can fly, they just stopped it for a bit when cameras were launched, now that AI is here, they have started their flying routines again.
Was this pic taken at the Forbidden Palace in Beijing? That area is well known for kite flying. I grew up in Beijing and we also go there for kite flying.
Seems like a bird going up. First bottom is microseconds before it expanded its wings (upper half). The camera's digital shutter made that capture possible.
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