What is the incidence of flipped, reversed images?

<p>How often does it happen that photos get reversed, flipped from right to left, in traditional photography? I mean by accident, not on purpose. And I mean within the realm of professional photographers. <br>

The reason I ask is because I found three images of Lee Harvey Oswald, President Kennedy's alleged assassin, and these images are reversed, where it's the mirror image. For instance, they each show his right eye as traumatized when it was really his left eye that got injured. I am trying to determine whether the reversals happened by accident or on purpose.<br>

Are there any knowledgable opinions about this? Thank you.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I remember scanning a reproduction of a painting for a paper and mirrored the scan by accident. Unfortunately it wasn't an abstract painting, but a scenic of my own home-town. Shame on me!<br>

I've had pictures reversed by papers on purpose and always try to convince the „wrongdoers” that this shouldn't be a common practice.</p>

<p>Graphic designers seem to be taught that if they ever do a layout with a picture looking out of the page, they will be fed to a tank of piranha fish. This extends even to musicians holding guitars with logos on the headstock which look ridiculous if reversed. I will never really understand this. Of course, there are many occasions when pictures are reversed by accident, too.</p>

<p>Some times an image does not tell a thousand words, trickery ! i am sure there is a lot of it, an imagenot quite working, flip it and viola ( i must admit i dont do that.)</p>

<p>...and sometimes it is done to create a different effect:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/8354592<br /><br /></p>

<p><br />http://www.photo.net/photo/10597715<br /><br /></p>

<p>But generally, it would be up to the photographer (and maybe a editor having a bad day in the office....)</p>

 

<p>I have seen a landscape ian old book, where I know the location, and it's definitely flipped.<br>

I've done it a few times myself when contact printing, which is embarassing.</p>

<p>Perhaps the most famous would be Billy the Kid, the left handed gun.<br>

So far as I recall, he wasn't left handed, but the photographic process used produced a mirror image.<br>

Consequently, his wasn't exactly a flipped image, but it needed flipping for publication, and that wasn't done.</p>

<p>So, the impression I am getting is that it was probably done on purpose and probably did not just happen by accident.</p>

<p>No, the example you show is almost certainly an accident. There are no visual clues as to which way round the picture goes, this requires background knowledge.</p>

<p>Happens all the time on video - mainly on TV programs. It often looks ridiculous, with car number plates, logos, etc reversed ! For video I cannot believe it's accidental though.</p>

 

<p>Here are two more flipped images of Oswald. Do these also look like accidents? Thank you.<br>

<a href="http://tinypic.com/r/3444a37/6">http://tinypic.com/r/3444a37/6</a></p>

<p>Here are two more flipped images of Oswalds. Do these also look like accidents?<br>

http://i46.tinypic.com/3444a37.jpg</p>

<p><a href="http://tinypic.com/r/3444a37/6">http://tinypic.com/r/3444a37/6</a></p>

 

I've flipped a few images even when I knew at the time of taking them that I would end up flipping them for better composition. This usually works well for scenics when one can't position oneself for a better composition. Sometimes I will suggest that a photo be flipped.

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/14617032

<p>Now I have found a 4th image of Oswald that was flipped. This seems way beyond the margin of error for such a thing to have happened by accident. We are talking about images of one man taken over a span of just two days. How could there be so many "accidents" concentrated in that brief span of time. If they happened at that rate, we'd be seeing flipped pictuers all the time.</p><div></div>

The malfeaseance of this first reversal that we found is unmistakable. Let us count the ways they altered the image.<br /><br />1) the reversal itself<br />2) the extreme darkening of it, as the original was altogether bright and illuminated<br />3) the wiping out of his raised hand, leaving only the faintest smudge of it<br />4) the unnecessary cropping of it<br /><br />http://tinypic.com/r/rbqo/6<br /><br />I think they were trying, first, to dissassociate the two images, and second, to create an image that would be discordant with the Doorway Man from the Altgens photo. The fact is that the original, nonreversed image is one of the very best matches we have between Oswald and Doorway Man, especially in regard to their clothes, but also in regard to their faces.<div></div>

<p>Maybe the probelm is how you describe the eye. Eye surgeons etc often desribe the eye as seen by the patient so the eye is the right eye seen by everyone else but it is Oswald's left eye. Or maybe it is just flipped.</p>

<p>This Oswald stuff is far, very far, from new. It should be, if at all, brought to its own little thread so it doesn't bring the whole assassination arguments here.</p>

<p>However, my principle - fortified by many years of experience - is</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Never attribute to conspiracy, anything that can be explained by stupidity.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>This is a light in the dark.</p>

<p>Heaven forbid; don't want to bring the whole conspiracy debate here. Just want to analyze the photo. Was it deliberately flipped or do it happen by accident? That's the only question, not who killed Kennedy. So far, we have 4 photos of Oswald that were flipped. So is it likely that was done deliberately or purely by accident? That's really the only thing I'm asking.</p>

<blockquote>

<p> flip it and viola</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br /><br />There's no need for an over-sized violin!</p>

<p>Ralph, having done quite a bit of darkroom work, I think I would have to be drunk out of my gourd to flip a negative in the enlarger and get a reversed image. It might be more possible for an inexperienced photographer. However, I would think any photographer tasked with printing a front page photo of the President's assasin would probably have enough experience to know which way the negative goes in the tray.</p>

<p>As others have said, there might have been some decision to flip an image for layout reasons. (They were less hysterical about such things back then.) And it's quite possible that reversed copies got distributed around and copied "correctly" in reverse.</p>

<p>As for this:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>1) the reversal itself<br />2) the extreme darkening of it, as the original was altogether bright and illuminated<br />3) the wiping out of his raised hand, leaving only the faintest smudge of it<br />4) the unnecessary cropping of it</p>

</blockquote>

<p>1: possibly a graphic layout decision<br>

2: There is no "correct" darkness or contrast of a photo. It's entirely how the photographer wanted to print it.<br>

3: The obscuring of the raised hand is a consequence of the darkness/contrast.<br>

4: Cropping is commonplace and would likely just be a graphic layout decision. That said, sometimes images are cropped to conceal important elements of a photo and therefore alter the context. I'm not saying this happened here, but just saying...</p>

<p>Sarah, thank you very much. You made my day. And I couldn't agree more that the likelihood of it happening 4 times by accident- where the photographer put the negative in the tray the wrong way- is untenable.<br>

And I'm glad you responded to the four points I made. And I see your point about there being no correct lighting, that it's whatever the photographer wants. Still, it's weird that any photographer would have wanted this one image so dark. It really did obscure the image.<br>

I am going to post them together: the original and the reversed one. I suspect that most people upon seeing the reversed one on the right would not associate it with the one on the left. If they thought about it a lot and compared them closely they would, but most people are not going to do that. It's hard to imagine what legitamate photographic reason there was to convert the left image into the right one, which someone obviously did on purpose.</p><div></div>

<p>Steve, whats wrong with over sized violins?</p>

<p>When printing film images onto paper, the negative is inserted into a metal frame holder called a negative holder or negative gate. First, the operator examines the film to determine which surface is the emulsion side. As a rule-of-thumb the emulsion side has lower surface reflectivity (dull or matte) vs. the base side which has a high sheen. Some films are more difficult to identity than others, meaning the surfaces appear similar as to sheen. We can fall back by reading the edge printing on the negative. If the words read correctly, the base side faces you.</p>

<p>I wish I could say it was a rarity to print backwards. Truth is, every expected printer has done this. The rule is, place the negative in the gate so that the paper emulsion faces the film emulsion. Add to this -- images in books were likely photographed by copying the print to make a half-tone negative. This half tone negative breaks the continuous tone of the image into a series of dots of different size and spacing. This half-tone is then used to make a plate that accepts ink in proportion to the half-tone dots. The half-tone negative can be inserted backwards.</p>

<p>In other words, the probability that the image will be printed backwards is low but this happens.</p>

<p>Thank you, Alan. Very valuable. What's weird is that they used such a poor image in the House Select Committee on Assassinations Report. Consider: it was reversed; it was severely darkened compared to the original; it was quite severely cropped; and because of the above, the gesture that Oswald was doing with his handcuffed hands was completely obliterated. So, I wonder why they used that image instead of the better one, which was available.</p><div></div>

<p>Here is the image they could have used. So why didn't they?</p><div></div>

<blockquote>

<p>So why didn't they?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>1) because they grabbed the first image, they found,<br /> 2) because they were stupid.</p>

<p>Magazines, even photomagazines, print(ed) reversed images all the time, and then have(had) to apologize to their alert readers. Newspapers, where the rush is to get it out the door, do it even more often.<br /> So why make a "federal case" out of this one instance? What are you trying to prove? "Hint, hint, nudge, nudge, say no more...."</p>

<p>This is a dead horse, enough already.</p>

<p>Obviously you joined here only a day or so ago to toot your own horn on this.<br>

You ignore every response except for the fragments of posts that you take as "verification" of the views you had before you ever posted.</p>