UFO Photos Made Easy

How I turned a dollar store decoration into a flying saucer!

No skill required!

Not all hoaxes are elaborate. In fact, many of the most infamous hoaxes turned out to be ridiculously simple.

Consider the McMinnville photographs. Many UFO enthusiasts still insist that they depict a real flying saucer, and the Condon Report said that the photographs could possibly be considered strong evidence.

But skeptics (myself included) can point to a number of factors indicating that the photographs very likely show a model or piece of junk strung between two power lines. Doesn't get much simpler than that! Yet the effect is convincing and the photos themselves are striking even to the skeptic.

Frankly, I find the creativity behind most hoaxes to be far more interesting than the narratives provided by the hoaxers themselves. I admire the ingenuity behind using mundane objects as interstellar spacecraft! And what better way to recycle than by turning garbage into a flying saucer? So I keep my eyes open, constantly on the search for the next would-be UFO.

Recently, I came across a potential flying saucer at the local dollar store...

 

I found the decoration (pictured above) in the electronics section of the local Dollar Tree (here's the item page on the store's website). It doesn't take a huge leap of imagination to see the potential in this shape! I bought two of them (in case I broke one, which is always a possibility with me), and started taking one of them apart as soon as I got home.

Fortunately, the plastic bulb was not glued to the... uh... flying-saucer bit (whatever it's really called), and the loop at the top was similarly just kind of wedged into place. It took about three seconds to disassemble the thing. When the bulb and loop were off, I taped the little fairy lights to the outer rim of the disk.

I could have put a lot more energy into this, like adding detail or using actual glue instead of tape, but I wanted to see how far I could go with minimal effort.

In the end, I had a pretty good flying saucer, lights and all! And all it took was about $1.25 and exactly no effort.

 

The next day, my girlfriend and I had lunch in the park. Of course, I brought my flying saucer for a test flight.

When we finished our lunch, we took turns tossing the saucer into the air and snapping a couple photos. We found that tossing it like a frisbee made it tumble around too much, and didn't give it enough air. So we started just kind of lobbing it straight up into the air, taking the photo at the peak of its trajectory.

The results were not bad, all things considered!

 

The lights aren't visible in the sunlight, of course. Next time, I'll have to try it at night!

Are these photos perfect? Foolproof? Nope. Not at all. The biggest tell is the lack of atmospheric haze. But that's not something most people will notice right away. The angle of the saucer is also a little weird. But that's not the point.

The great thing about this little experiment is how easy it was to do on a whim. No planning, no fancy effects--hell, no skill at all required! All it took was some spare time and the absolute minimum amount of creativity to snap some fun little UFO photos.

Additionally, since it's all in-camera, no CGI or digital trickery, we don't have to worry about matching the angle of the sunlight, or the colors of the background, or anything like that. It's all there in the original pixels.

Compare these with some classic "evidence" for flying saucers and you may find more similarities than you expect.

It's so cheap and so easy, why not give it a go yourself? All it takes is pocket change and a free afternoon. Just don't go around saying the photos you take are legit! I want to encourage creativity and healthy skepticism, NOT dishonesty!

And next time you see a UFO photo, remember: If I could do it, so could they.

Safe travels! 🛸

--Sean