NavList:

David Pike, you wrote:
"Well dear me. I didn’t know you could take a fuzzy photo from a website, save it in your computer, and then select it from your computer, and it’ll come up in high definition able to be magnified by large amounts. Isn’t science wonderful? I’ll have to try that on other photos. I’ve been looking for decent Rowlandson seaman prints for some time. " 

Yes, that's the trick. I felt it would be annoying if I didn't point out that it was a "trick question". Fortunately, John and Wolfgang spotted the trick right away.

Some details for anyone who has never seen this before: 
Years ago, when the web was new, there was an un-written rule that said that photos should be uploaded in a size that matched the display size since this usually implied optimal use of bandwidth. But from the earliest days, it was possible to upload a huge photo and then give it a very small "container" to sit inside. From the point of view of an average visitor to a web page, the image would appear small and there would be no real evidence of a larger image underlying. One might notice that an image like this would load slowly, filling in line-by-line (and you can see that if you refresh the page on the Mystic Seaport web site), but maybe not. Then came Wordpress. Wordpress was originally created as a system for writing blogs, but it has taken off as a generalized "content management system" and a great many web sites have switched over to wordpress from proprietary systems, including, for example mysticseaport.org and skyandtelescope.com. Wordpress, by its nature, tends to encourage a mis-match between the uploaded image and the displayed image and very frequently there is a huge version of a small photo underlying the image as displayed. Bandwidth doesn't mater nearly as much as it used to, but this does indeed make some web pages load much more slowly and if you pay for bandwidth, this is just wasted money. As you discovered, Dave, one way to get at the photo behind the visible image is to download the photo. Another approach is to right-click (option-click) on the image and look for something like "open image in new tab". When you do this, you get access to the actual file at its native display size (well, when it's opened in a new tab, you may have to click on it once to see it full size, but otherwise it's all there). So yes, you may be able to find larger versions of those prints you're looking for Dave, especially if you're looking at a web site built with some version of the wordpress engine.

Getting back to the photo... We read Richard Dunn's digital wristwatch (which itself looks like it belongs in a museum of retro tech... ha ha), and we see that it's 9:59:33. We would need to know more about the wearer's personality to decide how accurately it has been set, but I assume within 30 seconds. As John and Wolfgang noted, this is presumably displaying "summer time" (that's equivalent to "daylight saving time" in the USA) so for GMT that would be 8:59:33. The trees and lawn are green in the photo, so it seems safe to assume clocks are set to "summer time", but can we be sure? The watch appears to display the date. I read it as "WE 10 1" which I interpret as Wednesday, October 1 (that appears to imply that the photo was taken last year since Oct. 1, 2014 was a Wednesday, right? and Oct, 1, 2008 seems unlikely). I considered the possibility that "10 1" was January 10, but that seemed inconsistent with the foliage. Finally, the shadows on the buildings in the background do appear to be consistent with early morning sunshine near the equinox, so it all fits together.

Fun with photos... :)

Frank Reed