The Mirror newspaper ran this story today on a series of pictures taken by a John Payne from Newport, Wales, up on holiday at Loch Ness. The original story is at this link. Here is the account taken from the paper.
Loch Ness Monster 'captured in new pic' after tourist spots 'long neck' in water
A tourist claims to have captured proof of the Loch Ness Monster on camera, with photos showing 'a long neck'. John Payne, 55, was admiring the scenery from a window when he noticed strange movement on the nearby water. The dad-of-three grabbed his camera and managed to grab several pictures which seem to show a shape on the surface. John, a retail worker from Newport, Wales, said:
“I was looking out at the scenery from the window and this huge thing just appeared out of nowhere. I tried to get a picture but it was gone and then it popped up again further down the loch. I took another picture and then zoomed in on my camera and waited to see if it would appear again and it did. It must have been something very large because we were about a mile away from the loch and I could see it clearly. You wouldn’t have been able to see a bird or anything from that far away – it had to be something large. It was like a huge neck."
He went down to the loch later the same day but said the creature was nowhere to be seen. John added:
“I showed some people at the hotel and they were all really shocked. It all happened so quickly, it was only there for maybe two minutes. I looked at other Nessie pictures and these do look similar to it. At first I thought it was a giant fin, but I know there are no dolphins or porpoises in the loch so I was thinking what the hell is this thing. It wasn’t like it was tied to anything, like a buoy, because it kept moving further away.”
John was at guest house Foyers Roost on April 9th when he spotted movement on the lake.
The article has three photographs which were taken at different times, going by the relation between the object and the foreground trees which are shown below to see some more detail. The object is definitely moving if we compare its position to the trees in the foreground across the three images. I would say it has moved at least 100 metres in the time between snapshots. Mr. Payne said it disappeared twice and I would say that coincides with two of the treetops in the images which would obscure the object as it moved from left to right.
But by what means is it moving? Now the initial impression of what we are looking at does give the impression of a long neck and what looks like a back behind it. I zoomed in as far as I could on the three pictures for a further comparison below which is in chronological order from left to right. The appearance of the object does slightly change in each image, though it was hard to say if this was due to seeing a different aspect of it or something else.
Certainly one thing that stood out was the apparent "backwards looking" appearance of the presumed neck. Animals do not tend to swim forwards whilst continually looking backwards at the same time. However, the central image above does look a bit more upright which made me wonder about rotation. In fact, what looks like a kink in the first image began to make me think this was a log being blown up the loch by the prevailing south westerlies.
There was a log doing the rounds in Urquhart Bay a few years back which fooled or rather incentivized a few people with distant dubious photos. I took a picture of it at the time when I visited the area in 2017. However, the object here is on the other side of the loch, but I wouldn't discount this being another piece of tree debris.
Another theory I have now seen on the Internet is that this was a kayaker with a sail attached to the front and the person sitting down to the left. That is also probable and better than the log theory. Either way, the characteristics of the object point away from what the witness claimed it looked like.
In fact, when Mr. Payne said it was a mile away, but he could see it clearly, that came across as a contradictory statement. Not much is clear at a mile away I would suggest. But I do not doubt him when he said it had to be larger than a bird and looked like a neck. More could be gleaned if I had the original larger images, so in their absence I will leave it at that.
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