Take a look at this and let me know what you think. It looks so extreme that it is almost unbelievable. This is not my house or my job. Just wondering if anyone out there knows where it is.
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whoa DeJa vu...
These pictures were posted ealier in another topic on the forums here. No one seemed to know where they came from, but many believed they are faked pictures - created in photoshop.
First off - Those pics are WAY to big for folks on dial-up accounts. About 800X600 is about the max reasonable size - Thould give you a fiel somewhere around 100K.
Second - Those pics were already discussed:
http://forums.taunton.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=tp-breaktime&msg=37450.1
I think the consensus was that they had been digitally modified.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
The "driveway1.jpg" picture is a new one. It was not posted in the earlier thread. It is a picture of the same driveway in the other thread, but taken at a different angle. Comparing the two pictures of the same driveway, one from this thread, and one from the old thread, I'm not so sure it's a fake driveway. If it is a fake, they did a fantastic job. They changed the perspective of the allegedly fake driveway while keeping the details the same. It looks like the picture in this thread was taken at least a day or two later than the picture in the other thread, because the driveway has been extended to the street in this one. The details are amazing. Look at the board lying on the sidewalk and leaning against the base of the driveway. It's exactly the same in both pictures, but from a different perspective.
I don't have photoshop, so I can't look at the pictures in different color channels. Perhaps with this new, larger image, someone like Luka or Wrecked Angle can take a closer look in photoshop to see if these are manipulated.
Driveway 2 is exactly the same picture as one that was in the first thread.
Drive 1 is indeed the same drive from another angle.
This is why I like bigger pictures. Things get lost in a smaller pic. For instance, in the drive 2 pic, the one in the other thread is so small that you almost completely lose the clues to the fact that the drive was indeed finished to the street already. For all intents and purposes, in the smaller version, the drive does NOT extend to the road. Not even when you blow the smaller version back up again. It simply loses those details. In the bigger version of the same pic, you can see two indicators that show the drive already there, complete to the road.
As much as I was convinced I was right, I have to say I was completely wrong. It looks like the real thing, folks.
You show me the smaller pics again, and I would probably have to come to the same conclusions. But the larger ones tell more of the truth. There are still some small things that I think could have been fudged, but the overall could not have been faked as well as that.
Bottom line, I'll be taking even my own opinions on pics, with a large grain of salt from now on.
Live, Love, Forgive and Forget
quittintime
I'd like to see that driveway covered in snow / ice like it is up here in the Great White for 4 months!!! LOL !!My DW says I'm a tool head with a sawdust brain !!
Thanks for taking a closer look at these large resolution pics. They are amazing, and it's much more enjoyable to beleive they are real than to think they are fake.
Thanks again.
A friend e-mailed the pics to me, I'm checking with him on where he got them from, but who knows how far they have travelled over then internet. In the early thread concerning these pictures, didn't someone say they were taken in Houston? Is there any validity to that? Sorry about the size of the pictures, it was how they were sent to me. I would have shrunk them, but I didn't want to lose any of the quality. Thanks for responding!
I think they are REAL. I believe the builder used to work for "hot wheels" making yellow tracks in the 70's.
PS. There is a driveway around the corner from me in NJ that is about as steep as those in your photos (30-35 degrees). Leads me to believe they are real. Wonder what the floor in the garage looks like. Hell of a hump to drive over.
What is really interesting to me is in the second picture, look at the very top of the driveway of the house next to the really bad one. It looks to me that they have gone to the effort to transition from the drive to the garage with a bit of an arc, not a sharp angle between the drive and the garage floor. If you assume the picture is a fake, why would you go to the trouble of adding this on one driveway and not the other? If it's a real picture, the arc makes "some" sense.
Maybe the "arc" came from subs repeatedly driving into the garage, and wearing the sharp edge off.
Personally, not too worried about real/retouched. I can retouch a photo with corel photo-paint to look as real as these and I already know of a driveway as steep, so my feeling is...... "Why would any sane person want a driveway as steep as this?"
Maybe they are buying the home with proceeds won at the X games.
What a perfect "launcher" for kids to shoot into the street on scooters, big wheels, skates, skateboards, bicycles, etc etc or worse yet.... even baby strollers . Maybe I should ask the guy around the corner.
I have to agree with Luka on this one - I was wrong too. The big advantage of this thread over the last one is the fact that the identical drive is shot from two close but different angles. That allows you to map details between the images to see if everything matches.
In the attached pic, I overlaid the two photos with arrows pointing to several details that match perfectly between them. There is just too much detail in the right places for both of these photos to be fabricated.
Lord help the occupants! The house isn't even finished yet and it looks like the point where the drive attaches to the house has already started washing out. I wouldn't be surprised if the varmints have already started moving into that hole...Kevin Halliburton
"I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity." - I.M. Pei -
Is that Osama I see peeking out?
My thoughts exactly. Now we know where obl is; we just have to figure out where the picture was taken!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Georgia I tell ya Georgia..I've seen him with bigfoot down there. Kevin.. , ZOOM up those car tags..gotta be Georgia
I think that I know what happened.
They excevated for an 8ft basement.
Then the forms guy came by and mis-read the prints and set the forms up for an 8 cubits basment.
Then the forms guy came by and mis-read the prints
Another tragedy of misusing the black diamonds . . . Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
They shouldn't have used drywall screws to hold the basement forms together....that's not a mistake, it's rustic
Those aren't drywall screws, they're
PiffinScrews!!!
Just another example of modern housing gone wild.
I do remember way back in the early days when running around frisco and marveling at the intense slopes on the roads and driveways. Law said you had to cut your front wheels tight when parking so if the car slipped back it would hit the curb.
They had to build like that out there. Those pics just look like some builder was in there looking for the bucks and damnthe practicality.
Now we know why god created SUV's.
What we need is a thread on 'Common Sense'.
Edited 12/19/2003 2:37:40 PM ET by rez
No, Piffin Patent Self Finding Screws would not build to such an unreasonable angle.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Ya know I concurred with Kevin (Wrecked Angle) that these photos were faked but I've got to say now looking at the Hi-res versions that they are genuinne. If they are faked the artist who did them is doing CIA quality work and should really be working on drawings putting Saddam in a pink dress. I think the outrageousness of the construction along with what looked like blurring of certain areas of the smaller photos sold us on it being faked.
For Kevin Luka and the other artists who like to play around with photoshop. Is this one real or touched up?
View Image
Click for an even larger version
View Image
ParadigmProjects.com | Paradigm-360.com | Mac4Construction.com
Edited 12/19/2003 9:57:28 PM ET by Jerrald Hayes
I don't know what was done to these photos but they are fake. The angle of attack prevents any vehicle from being able to enter the garage. No code would allow this type of entry to a garage.
Gabe
Do not take this wrong, but does any code specify a car must be able to get in, or that it even has to be a "garage"?..On the same thought it is too steep to be a wheel chair ramp, but maybe a better egress than stairs? I am all for the fake out theory and you got me thinkin about the gray areas of "code". I can't find anything any where that says it has to contain a car.
Egress is the key word if you want to search for code violations.
I'm looking at the concrete finishing and for forming marks that would support the picture's credibility and something is not right. The lines of the sidewalk are irregular but the ramp appears to be perfect, too perfect.
Gabe
The scale seems wrong too. The garage door is not right either. Not wide enough for a car and the ramp appears to taper.
Edited 12/19/2003 9:13:00 PM ET by GABE_MARTEL
Jamie, out of curiosity where did you get these pics?
Please post larger files next time...............I love sitting here waiting for something to happen.
no problem with drinage here!
I'm with Reinvent here, I want to know where the photos were taken.
Luka brought a healthy grain of salt to the photos, and Kevin spen more time than I was willing to invest in checking them for trickery--I remain on the fence, undecided either way. Knowing the source for the photos would really help.
My first thought was, "Wow, the Thread That Would Not Die." I've seen some of the digital 'trash' that the photo-ware on the drugstore-made CD will toss into a jpeg to kill "red eye," or to correct contrast.
I've seen jobsites in Austin that were 30-40" above street grade, and only setback 25' from the curb, too (including a 3' parkway and a 3' sidewalk, for a BoS to garage of only 19'). This would be only a couple or three feet more--well within the uncaring range of some of the big national builders.
It's also just the thing for some wag to cobble up, too.
We need facts.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
I was the guy who posted the pictures on the first thread. The person I got them from (they were posted on another board) is an architect in Houston, and claimed these houses were somewhere nearby. He was going to post additional information but I never saw anything more.
It doesn't look like Houston to me, but I've only been there once so I'm no expert on the local geography.
but I've only been there once so I'm no expert on the local geography.
I've been (too many times). That sort of elevation change is only common up around the rivers a good ways north. The dirt would be a close match for some parts of the San Jacinto up around Montogmery County (which, with Plantersville, is where the latest "getting away from the big city" communities are going in).
Could be in Liberty County near the Trinity or one of its tributaries, but that seems less likely. I'll have to go look at the license plates again, we have about 2 dozen specialty plates in Texas.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Man I liked to meet those concrete finishers..they must be fast! Howd they get it up there from the truck without it ending up in the road or back into the truck.
Poor lil johhnie is going to have one hell of a trike ride!
You couldnt drive anything longer than a VW bug up there with out tearing the undercarriage off.Maybe its for the Gravity games.
Howd they get it up there from the truck
They ordered 3" slump 3500 concrete, and used every chute on the truck. Then, Chico pocito stood on the chute with a shovel, and they gooped the mud in from top down. That's why the side aprons in pic 2 look so rough, that's what came off when they screeded the forms . . . Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Your missing the obvious. They cast the driveway on FLAT ground and after it cured they lifted it and placed it with a crane against a tamped earth slope.
Two things I caught sort of..Looks a LOT like Georgia red clay, and in "EXHIBIT 1" for the jury..the car tags seem similar to Georgia..
It does look like the red s--t I stomped through on Ft Benning for the better part of a year. My guess is Georgia also!