15/07/2026 - Erdington, Birmingham – Being Photographs

Birmingham UFO Group Case Report

Author: Dave Hodrien

Release Date: 01/09/2026

James reached out BUFOG on 3^rd August 2026 via our website’s sighting report form. He stated that he had taken a couple of photographs of his back garden, and when he checked the images a few days later one of them appeared to have a figure on it which he did not see at the time. He wanted our opinion on what the photograph showed.

I got back in touch with him to ask for further details via numerous E-Mails, and also asked for some later photos to be taken and sent to me, which James was more than happy to comply with. Using the information and additional photos I then conducted an analysis of the original two images sent.

The Photographs

James lives on Alwynn Walk, Erdington, Birmingham.

On 15^th July 2026 his next door neighbour was in the process of having some overgrown bushes cleared from a passageway in their back garden. It was a sunny and clear day. At 4:41pm James decided to take a couple of photographs from an upstairs window so after the work was finished he could compare the difference.

James says that he has a habit of taking two photographs in case one of them turns out blurred. He also mentioned that the workers were dressed in black and were not in shot when he took the photos.

Below are the two photographs:

James did not check the photos for several days, but when he did he noticed what appeared to be a figure of some kind in the first image:

It wasn’t apparent to him what the figure was, and he did not recall seeing it when he took the photograph. This prompted him to get in touch with BUFOG a couple of weeks later.

Photographic Analysis

I first used an online Exif metadata viewer to check the metadata behind the two images. Below is the metadata for the first image:

I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of the photos but when photographs are altered in image editing software, lots of the metadata values and their order gets changed. This can be used to determine if a photo is genuine or not. Although it is possible to over-write metadata, it is very difficult to do this 100% accurately, and most people don’t even know that metadata exists, let alone how to alter it.

The highlighted Make, Model and Device Type metadata values show that this photograph was taken on a Samsung smartphone and have not been tampered with using software. The DateTimeOriginal and TimeStamp values give the precise date and time that it was taken.

The second photograph's metadata is almost identical, but confirms that the second shot was taken 5 seconds after the first:

With the authenticity of the photographs confirmed, it was now time to establish what they did or didn’t show. I initially suspected that the “head” of the figure was the only anomaly, with it clearly being present in the first image but gone in the second. I thought that the “body” of the figure may have just been the roof of the shed partially hidden by vegetation

In late August I asked James to send me an additional photograph showing the same location:

From this later image it is clear that the body of the figure was not the roof of the shed. It is also clear that there are no white coloured garden ornaments/furnishings which could have been mis-interpreted as a figure.

Below is a zoomed view of the area where the figure is situated from each photograph side by side:

From this comparison it can be seen that both the “head” and “body” are part of the same thing, and that they move to the left between the two photographs. James was mistaken that the figure was only present in the first image, it is in both, it’s just more hidden from view in the second shot.

With the figure being more visible in the first of the two images I focused on this for the remainder of the analysis. I wondered if it was someone wearing white clothing, perhaps wearing a cap to shelter from the bright sunshine, with the black area being a shadow from the peak of the this cap/

Below is a zoomed view of the “head” of the figure:

It is possible to see what looks like a white peaked cap facing to the left:

It is also possible to see what may be a mouth visible below the cap:

Lastly it is possible to see what may be an ear and hairline:

I decided to see what Chat GPT made of the two images. It too went along with this as the most likely explanation:

Chat GPT noted that the images were over-exposed due to the bright sunlight, leading to some of the detail being lost. I decided to feed the zoomed image of the “head” into it, informed it that it was over-exposed and asked it to fix the image. If you are still finding it hard to see the head of a person in a white cap, then the below screen grab will likely change your mind:

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the above proves beyond any doubt that the photograph shows a man in white clothes wearing a peaked cap. However it’s important to note that this is just Chat GPT’s interpretation of what the image shows, it has not actually removed the over-exposure from the photograph (this is impossible).

To prove this point, I also fed the zoomed view of the whole figure into Chat GPT too, just to see whether it would come up with a similar image. Instead I got the following:

As you can see, when provided the whole figure, Chat GPT thought that the image shows a strange humanoid swan-like animal, and therefore rendered it as such! This highlights the fact that analysis performed by Large Language Models like Chat GPT cannot be taken at face value.

Conclusions

I am unaware of humanoid swan creatures in the world of cryptozoology, and therefore do not believe that this is what the image shows. However, Chat GPT’s initial interpretation, and cleaned up zoom of the head of the figure both echo my thoughts on the photograph. I feel that the most likely explanation is a man wearing white including a peaked cap, who was there that day helping clear up the vegetation, and who was not noticed at the time by James when he took the photographs.

This case is somewhat reminiscent of the infamous “Solway Firth Spaceman” photograph taken on 23^rd May 1964. A man from Carlisle named Jim Templeton took several photographs of his daughter while on a trip to Burgh Marsh. When the photos were developed he was shocked to see what looked like an astronaut in the background:

Numerous researchers have looked into the photograph and the general consensus is that it was actually Jim’s wife who had accidentally wandered into the shot. It is known from other photos taken on the same day that she was wearing a light blue dress. It is likely that the colour was washed out due to over-exposure caused by the sun, just like the images discussed in this report. It is also theorised that she was facing away from the camera, giving the impression of the “visor” of the astronaut’s helmet, and accounting for the odd shape of the arms.

Regarding the photos James took, I advised him to find out of his neighbour which gardeners they hired, track down their contact details, send them the photos and ask them whether they can identify who he inadvertently captured on camera. They may possibly be able to confirm beyond doubt who was captured in the images. James has not yet confirmed that he plans to do so, but I feel for now that this case has been sufficiently solved.

Copyright Dave Hodrien 2026