Tracing The Tintype
This portrait is taken from a portion of the Billy The Kid tintype and enlarged. Please notice in this photo Billy has his head tilted slightly to his right side but Brushy’s head is held straight in the photo I need to compare.
So I begin by rotating the picture so that Billy’s head is in the straight up vertical position. You can clearly see this has not altered the face in the photo in any way nor has it contaminated the results. The red vertical line demonstrates the accuracy of this process.
After zooming in on the picture to see more detail I very carefully traced the outline of the face, eyes, eyebrows, mouth and ears in red. Due to the extreme amount of distortion in the photo great care had to be taken to maintain accuracy. Example: his right ear has a large dark spot where the earlobe joins the face. At first it appears a small piece of his earlobe may have been missing or abnormally formed since the area presents a rather jagged shape that actually appears to indent into the side of his neck. But after closer inspection it is apparent the dark area is indeed a result of the deterioration of the photo.
The earlobe could easily be thought to appear as in the photo to the left but this shape is actually incorrect as you will see.
Look closely at the spot circled in red here and you will note there is flesh coloring just below the dark area. There are many such dark spots in the picture. This one just happens to be right near the bottom of the earlobe.
So this is the correct outline of the ear. Such careful attention was used throughout the tracing including the eyes, eyebrows and mouth. The lack of clearly defined shadows in the photo makes it difficult to determine the exact width of the bridge of the nose or the thickness of the nostrils. The exact shape of his left ear is not really visible in the photo but keeping it proportional to the right ear and commensurate with the size and shape of the visible inner portion presents the likely correct shape.
Once the features were traced as accurately as possible, I added straight lines going from pupil to pupil, pupils to nose tip, pupils to mouth corners, eyebrow to eyebrow and a vertical line to mark the center of the face and the width of the nose. Last, but of great importance, I placed a green line measuring the distance from the lower lip to the bottom of the chin and blue lines marking the space between the lips.
The next step is extremely crucial and will be fully explained. This comparison technique presents a difficulty in that Billy’s mouth was open in the tintype and we have no photo of Brushy with the same pose. Additionally the front to back tilt of the head is likely not the same and is imperceptible in 2 dimensional photos. So in order to present a viable comparison I first copied all the tracing and measuring lines. Then before placing them over Brushy’s photo I selected the lower lip, the lower blue line, and the green line and moved them up as a group until the two blue lines came to touch each other the way the lips would when the mouth is closed. The bottom of the chin was also moved the same amount without moving the upper portion of the jaw. One other allowance was made. Since the ears are normally at the pivot point of the head’s front and back tilt, in a 2 dimensional photo that tilting appears to make the other facial features appear to move higher or lower in relation to the ears. If this is not clear, step in front of a mirror, place your finger tips to your earlobes and watch your facial features move higher and lower as you tilt your head back and forward.
Once the tracings were prepared they were pasted over the face of Brushy’s photo and his picture zoomed (scaled) until the pupils of the eyes were in the correct position. This scaling does not affect the shape or distance between facial features. It is only necessary to get the picture to the correct size to make the comparison valid.
Points of similarity are numerous. In fact the only real difference is a minimal discrepancy in the width of the upper jaw line. This minimal difference could easily be the result of 7 to 9 years of aging. The inner ears are the same, the distances from eye pupils to nose tip to corners of the mouth to distance between mouth and nose and distance from lower lip to chin are in many cases virtually identical and in others too close to be accounted for by chance. I believe from this comparison alone it is more than reasonable to assert the possibility that the men in these two photos are indeed one and the same. Certainly not proven. But definitely possible.
So I made more comparisons to see if I could find anything to negate the possibility they were the same man. First I enlarged the eyes of both men to take a closer look. Notice the slight difference in the shape of the upper eyelids in the top set of eyes. Those are the eyes in the tintype. The right eyelid (his right eye) has more upward curvature than his left eyelid which is just a bit less of an arc. The second set of eyes are Brushy’s. As stated earlier there are more pronounced shadows plus the eyes seem to be more wide open. But the same difference between left eye and right eye is clearly there. The red lines help make visual comparisons of the shapes of each eye.
The nose closeup on the far left is from a photo of Brushy at age 14 and the nose to the right is from Billy’s tintype. Notice the identical size and shape of the two noses even to the nostrils and the curvature of the bridge of the nose. You can also see a remarkable similarity of the inner edges of the eyebrows and the distance between them.
The following is a side by side comparison done with a slightly different approach. Both individuals’ heads are tilted as in the tintype and there are no adjustments made for backward tilt of Billy’s head or the open mouth in the tintype. That backward tilt creates a shadow underneath the chin. In this tracing, Billy’s chin is outlined to allow for that shadow. Notice the backward tilt of Billy’s head also makes his ears appear slightly lower in relation to his other facial features. These results do, in my opinion, show two faces that are virtually identical in dimensions. It would be very unlikely that two faces would match this well and not be the same person, especially considering the other evidence supporting Brushy Bill’s claim.
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