Strange Anomalies in the Famous Situation Room Photo

American Thinker

Recently,  the MSM were shocked by the news that a girlfriend in Obama’s Dreams book was a composite.  For many, such news comes as no  surprise.  The concept of a composite presidency certainly comes as no  shock as someone who participated as a contributor and authored evidence  presented at Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s press conference on Obama’s long-form birth certificate report.  On the heels of these events — and taking  advantage of an anniversary of the bin Laden raid — are recent campaign tactics  to politicize the killing of Osama bin Laden.  With the re-emergence of another round of gutsy call faux heroism regarding Obama’s decision, it may also be a good time to revisit the famous “Situation Room” photo released by the White House.  Is it  Photoshopped?

Like everything else Obama does to make a political point,  is the photo a composite as well?

Beyond the obvious blurred photo in front of Hillary Clinton, are there other hints  of manipulation?  A  Swedish paper makes the observation that Obama looks like a midget  in the chair despite his six-foot-plus stature.  When comparing the size of  the surrounding people in the photo to Obama, the photo certainly gives the  impression that Obama’s head (or possibly the entire body) was placed into the  photo and resized a tad too small.  And as a side-note observation: why is  everyone in the room dressed in work  attire — as if they went to work that day — except for  Obama?

Compare  the size of surrounding heads in the “Situation Room” photo to the size of  Obama’s head.  Even if you use a perspective argument — in which objects  appear smaller at a greater distance — then why are the faces behind Obama  still larger?  Marshall Webb’s head is larger as well, and keep in mind  that Marshall is sitting next to Obama (on the same plane).

Referring  back to the “Situation Room” photo again, look at the difference in head size  between Obama and Biden (in the “Situation Room” photo), and  then contrast with differences in size from other photos found of Obama and  Biden.  The height and head shapes are comparatively similar in size for  the vast number of photos seen of the president and VP.

Another observation focuses (no pun intended) on the eyes of everyone in the room. A large and overexposed sharpened image  of the “Situation Room” can be viewed here that offers a clear glimpse into the various pairs  of eyes.  Follow the direction of the center of focus  for all the surrounding faces in the room.  When zoomed in closely, the  eyes are clear and detailed for many of these faces.  However, not only do  Obama’s eyes lack detail in this overexposed photo, but the direction of his  glance appears to be pinpointing a higher plane than that of everyone else in the room.  It was reported here that the famous picture was taken not in the  situation room, but rather from a smaller conference room next to the situation  room.  A search for images of this conference room suggests that monitors  are mounted on the wall just slightly above eye level when sitting — which is  consistent with the gaze level of the surrounding members in the  photo.

Try  this test: instead of zooming in close, try zooming out to a low level of the  image, and notice a consistency in lighting and softness to the skin tones  for the majority of faces in the room — except for Obama, and two players  standing behind Bill Daley.  Let me offer a few additional and possibly  problematic observations on these two individuals standing in the back.   Their names are Anthony Blinken, national security advisor to Vice  President Biden, and Audrey Tomason of the National Counterterrorism  Center.  The Daily Beast speculates on the reasons for Tomason’s presence in  the photo as diversity balance so Hillary Clinton would not be the only woman in  the room.

A  similar observation could be made for the directional glance of the eyes for  Blinken and Tomason, who appear to be glancing on a different vector path than  the surrounding faces.  The lighting for these two individuals appears off  when taking into account how the light falls on many of the other characters in  this iconic photo.

Judging  by the light at the top of Bill Daley’s head (who is standing in front of  Blinken), it is possible that a light from overhead is glaring directly  on top of Blinken.  Having said that, Blinken and Tomason seem to have a  different set of rules regarding how the light falls on their faces compared to  their co-workers.

In  addition, when zooming in close to examine the shirt area of Blinken, there  appears to be some indistinct areas for a shirt so well-lit and strongly contrasted at the upper area of  the torso.  It is hard to determine if this could be due to image-editing  or normal shadowing and light falloff.

However,  a few more questions to ponder in regard to Tomason: if Tomason is standing  behind Blinken, why do her hands rest in front of Blinken’s shirt?  And is  there a watch on both wrists?

A  close-up from the overexposed photo is also provided in which it is clearly  visible that Tomason’s hands are in front of Blinken’s shirt and even appear to  come out in front of Daley’s jacket.  While the lack of detail could be  natural due to Tomason’s position in the photo, both arms seem to mutate into  odd or unrecognizable hand shapes.

What  do you think?  Photoshopped, or is my imagination simply on overload from  too many composite stories emanating from the White House?

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/strange_anomalies_in_the_famous_situation_room_photo.html#ixzz1uQnTro2n

2 thoughts on “Strange Anomalies in the Famous Situation Room Photo

  1. The photo looks totally bogus to me. But then this admin would put a milk dud on a toothpick and claims it’s the President’s head. They don’t even try anymore.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s