Birmingham UFO Group Case Report
Author: Dave Hodrien
Release Date: 16/11/2023
Last Updated: 17/11/2023
Eesha Patel is an experiencer and online podcaster. In late October 2023 I was invited to talk on her podcast about some of my past investigations.
In the run up to the show we were in contact for a number of weeks and Eesha informed me of a UFO photograph she had taken earlier in the year while on holiday. I offered to take a look at the image and perform some detailed metadata analysis which would help prove the authenticity of the photograph. She provided full details of what had taken place, and sent me the original photo for examination.
Photograph Background
In May 2023 Eesha and her partner Martin Sisolakwas were on holiday in Kragujevac, Serbia staying with their long time friend Zeljko Zivkovic. On 26th May Zeljko decided to take them to visit Manasija Monastery in Despotovac.
They used their car for the journey, with Martin driving and Zeljko on the back seat. The route to the monastery took them through a small town called Medveða. Due to the town’s small size it was quite quiet with not many other drivers or pedestrians around. It was a sunny and warm morning with only light cloud in the sky.
At 10.42am Eesha suddenly spotted a stork sitting on top of a nest it had built on top of a tree. As these birds are not native to Australia, Eesha asked Martin to pull up the car so she could briefly get out and take a “live” photograph of it on her iPhone SE 2020 (One which takes multiple frames in quick succession to create a very short video).
After Eesha had taken the photograph of the stork, everyone got back in the car. Back in the passenger seat Eesha glanced at the photo preview on her phone to see how it had come out. She immediately noticed an unusual cigar-shaped shape seemingly positioned in the sky visible above the nest:
She opened the live photograph in her gallery to examine it further. She soon found that the object only appeared in a single frame of the live photograph, and it so happened that it was this particular frame which had been chosen by her phone to display as the preview!
Eesha has had numerous contact experiences throughout her life involving a number of different types of beings, and she immediately felt that the object on the image was an alien craft. She attempted to telepathically connect with this, and sensed that the object was indeed a craft, and that it contained both Grey and Reptilian beings, in addition to the lesser known Arcturians, an other-dimensional species believed by some to exist.
She told Martin and Zeljko straight away and showed them the photo. Looking around the sky there was no sign of the craft so she did not ask them to further delay the journey by remaining in the area. They spoke about the photograph with one another as they continued their journey to the monastery.
Later on Eesha airdropped the image to another friend and he ran it through some picture inspection website to attempt to figure out what it was, but this came up with no useful results.
General Analysis
The original photograph provided to me is in the relatively new HEIC file format. Unfortunately this cannot be displayed inside the report directly. Below is a converted Jpeg copy of the original image, with the object circled in red:
Zoomed view of the object:
Zoomed view of the object with edge find:
At first observation, the object has a distinct shape to it, with sharp angular edges and a variety of shades of grey within it. It does not immediately suggest a solid three dimensional object, although if it was moving very fast past the camera lens the exact structure could have been blurred or stretched out.
Below is the live photograph video footage:
I performed some frame-by-frame analysis of this footage. Unfortunately it is not possible to see the frame containing the object. This is most likely due to the conversion process from Eesha's smartphone.
Metadata Analysis
The metadata embedded in both photographs and videos can assist in confirming whether or not they have been manipulated using image/video editing software.
HEIC files are quite hard to edit in the first place. They are a more obscure file type which is not always supported by image editing software. However some modern versions of editing software such as Microsoft Paint and Adobe Photoshop allow you to open and modify HEIC files.
If an image is manipulated using editing software some of the metadata will unavoidably alter. While it is possible for a technical expert to amend most of the the metadata back to what it was using advanced software, the majority of people don’t even know that metadata exists behind image files, let alone how to manipulate it.
The photograph Eesha took was on an iPhone 2nd edition back camera. In order to perform the necessary analysis I asked Eesha without prior warning to send me another random HEIC image file from her smartphone. Here is a JPG version of that image for reference:
I then intentionally edited a copy of this image using online software. Lastly I compared the metadata of the UFO photograph, the original control image and the edited control image.
The following metadata changes occur when an image type taken on Eesha’s particular make and model of smartphone is directly manipulated using image editing software:
- File Size changes
- Compatible Brand 1 changes from MiPr to heic
- Compatible Brands 2 to 4 vanish
- Meta Image Size changes from Image Width x Image Height to Image Height x Image Width
- Orientation vanishes
- Colour Profiles appears
- Colour Primaries appears
- Transfer Characteristics appears
- Matrix Coffeicients appears
- Image Width changes to Image Height value
- Image Height changes to Image Width value
- Image Spatial Extent changes from Image Height x Image Width to Image Width x Image Height
- Media Data Size changes
- Media Data Offset changes
- Image Size changes from Image Height x Image Width to Image Width x Image Height
- Many metadata values change positioning
In the below comparison screenshots the first column of values is the UFO photograph. The second column is the control image. The third column is the modified control image. I have highlighted metadata values of significance where changes have occurred:
While it is not possible to tell if the File Size or Media Data Offset has changed as these vary per image, it can be seen from the comparison that the UFO image (first column) matches the ordering and values seen in the original control image (second column) instead of the modified control image (third column). This means that it is extremely likely that the UFO image has not been manipulated using editing software, and is an original un-tampered photograph.
Conclusions
The witness took a "live photograph" with multiple frames, and the object only appears in a single frame of this, which means that it is not a mark/scratch on the camera lens and also confirms that the object was not stationary.
The pale pixels around the edge of the object are an artefact caused by the colour difference between the darker object and the lighter sky beyond it, and do not indicate the presence of a field of some kind around it.
I have seen many similar photographs before which have turned out to be birds, with the wings happening to be level with the body, creating a disc/cigar-like shape, or positioned slightly above creating a domed-disc shape. Below is an example of such a photograph (which is a seagull):
However if this was a bird it would logically have been present in multiple frames, and therefore would also have been visible in the footage.
The metadata proves beyond reasonable doubt that the object seen in the image was not later added using image editing software by the witness, however it is unfortunately impossible to determine exactly how far away from the camera lens the object is. Therefore it is also not possible to tell how large it is, or how fast it could have been moving.
While the object could certainly be interpreted as a distant cigar (or disc) shaped craft of some kind, there is not enough detail to confirm this. Sometimes small objects close to the camera such as insects or airborne debris can get photographed and appear as something much larger and further away.
If an insect flies past the camera at close proximity it will cover the viewing area extremely fast. This can lead to its structure blurring or stretching out in the direction of travel, which means that it may not be recognisable if it happens to be caught on the photograph.
There were insects in the air at the time. It is possible to see at least a few in the moving video footage. Here are a couple of stills from the footage showing some of these insects:
There is therefore the possibility that the object is an insect, or perhaps something else, such as a seed pod drifting in the air. This could also explain why none of the individuals present saw anything with their naked eye.
However this possible explanation does not take into account Eesha’s telepathic sensation that the object was a craft containing several specific types/species of being. If she does indeed possess such abilities, and the sensation she felt at the time was correct, then this of course suggests a much less mundane explanation for the photograph.
Essentially your thoughts regarding the origins of the object shown in the photograph are largely going to be down to whether or not you believe that certain experiencers are able to receive telepathic information, whether you feel this happened on this occasion, and your views on the specific types of ET being which Eesha mentioned.
Looking at the photograph on its own it is quite easy to dismiss it as an insect/debris moving past the lens, but it is important to look at all aspects of a case before reaching a conclusion. Either way, I have enjoyed analysing the photograph and can at the very least say that it is extremely unlikely to have been manipulated on computer.
If you would like to listen to Eesha’s podcast, you can check it out at https://eeshapatel.com/show/
Copyright Dave Hodrien 2023