A reader sent me the two pictures shown below. I found very little online about these pictures or discussion pertaining to them…..a couple forums from earlier in the year. Of course the question, as always, are the photos real or doctored. I’ll post the pictures and then offer some thoughts.
What little discussion I’ve read addresses the photos from about three perspectives. 1. The pictures have been “Photo Shopped”. 2. The moose in the pictures is real but everything around the moose makes it appear bigger than it really is. 3. There is nothing unusual about the moose or the picture. It’s just a good-sized moose but not that big.
My first response when I saw the pictures was, “Whoa, Dude! That’s a big moose!” After having time to examine the pictures more closely, I have a few questions but no definitive answers about the photos.
First question: If it was “Photo Shopped” then someone took the time to mess with two photos. That’s a bit rare, so from that perspective, I’m thinking the photos are probably real.
Things you might look for in a “Photo Shopped” picture would be things that seem out of place, misplaced or missing, i.e. shadows, plants, poses, etc. It is odd that it appears that in both pictures the moose seems to have the same pose as far as his feet and legs are concerned, although quite difficult to tell for sure. You can see that in both pictures, the left front leg is trailing and slightly lifted and the right rear leg is trailing. Coincidence I would suppose.
I’m not a photo manipulating expert but let’s assume we are working on the idea this is “Photo Shopped” and that it’s the same pose of moose superimposed onto another existing picture, I’m not sure what kind of software the person had that could turn the moose in the second picture to be walking more away from the photographer and yet maintain some semblance of image ratio.
It appears in the first picture, the legs are behind foliage that appears normal. Often when a picture is superimposed over another, the image is in front of everything else and it it difficult to get feet looking like they are planted on the ground correctly.
I took the photos and downloaded them and then put them into a photo editing software to enlarge and do a comparison between the two pictures. Looking at shadow and light blotches in the road, you can easily see that where no sun blotches existed in the first photo, suggesting the moose was making a shadow, there are sun splotches in the second. It also looks as those there are subtle changes in the sunlight spots just over the “culvert” from one picture to the other. The front right leg of the moose in the second photo appears to have sunlight shining on the inside around the knee area. Not knowing the time of day, etc. to know at what angle the sun is at exactly, from what I see, the sun is relatively high in the sky. The larger patch of sunlight on the road to the right of the moose in the second photo, appears to have at least more of a shadow in the middle of it that didn’t exist in the first picture.
If you examine the moose only in each photo, you see that at least from my experience, things appear proportional. The moose doesn’t have an enormous rack of horns nor does he have a large head. The body, height, shoulder width, head and antlers appear “normal” to me and the “bell” hanging from his neck isn’t exceptionally big.
However, if you imagine a full-sized pick-up truck sitting just in front of that moose, wow! If the road is a woods road built to take full-sized vehicles, there is argument that this is a big moose. If, on the other hand, this is an ATV road, it’s your average, everyday healthy bull moose.
I’ve read arguments that the photographer is shooting from low near the ground creating a taller than normal perspective for the moose. I don’t see that in either picture. Argument could be easily made that if this is an ATV trail, odds are pretty good that the photographer may have been sitting on an ATV and that looking at the trees to the right of the photographer, it appears about the right height.
I am wondering about some tiny “spots” I see on the moose in the first picture that are not visible in the second. Were they dirt spots on a windshield or window of a car or truck? Very difficult to tell anything from what I can see for sure.
Some discussion on these photos suggested that in Canada, where supposedly these pictures were taken (New Brunswick), this appears to be a “normal” ATV road with typical smallish regrowth from a spruce forest, giving something like a moose standing in the middle of it the illusion that it is bigger than actuality. With nothing else in the picture that we can compare size to, it remains nearly impossible to tell.
My unprofessional opinion is that the photos are real and that more than likely this is a “typical” atv trail running through the middle of a spruce forest regrowth making the moose appear much larger than it really is.
Tom Remington
