are these the same person

[cmcm1]

hi can you help please
the guy with the bow tie lost part of his ear in the war photo taken about 1927
there were 4 men from this family that were in ww1 but I only have these two photos
any help
Thank you

[Lady Di]

IMHO they are different men

The nose and ear are different dispite the age gap

Di

[Suziesmith37]

Only personal opinion so no one please shout at me

I think they are the same person

The chin shape is the same, the younger man is already developing the tell tale bag shape under the eyes and the top of the left ear on the younger man is the same shape and curl as the ear on the older man.  The nose is always difficult as it spreads as we get older. Mouth is almost identical.

It is difficult to tell precisely without overlaying the photos - perhaps we have an expert lurking somewhere with that technology?

I think your problem arises with the fact that the other options are from the same family - so it will be very likely that they will have similar characteristics!

100% sure, no - but certainly a lot of likely facial matches.

Will probably be one of those ongoing mysteries until technology tells you otherwise - thanks for sharing the photos though.

Su

[KateJones]

Hi,
This is a difficult one, because so few things are possible to compare.  You can't compare the damaged ear, nor the top lip because one of the men has a moustache, nor the shape of the head because of the hat. Also the tilt of the head is slightly different making it impossible to compare the shape and position of the nostrils.  Despite that, I don't think that these are two pictures of the same man.  The chins are quite similar, which suggests a possible family connection, however, despite the man on the left having lost at least part of one ear, it looks like the other ear is quite close to the head near the ear lobe, and further from the head at the top of the ear.  The other man has ears that stick out from the head at the bottom and the top of the ear.  I did consider that this might be an effect of his hat, but usually this just makes the top of the ear poke out. 
The man in the bow tie has his head at a very slight angle to the photographer, which makes it impossible to see the lobe of the ear that hasn't been damaged, but I think that if the other man was turned at the same slight angle, you would still see a bit of the bottom part of the ear.

I've tried fiddling around with the pictures to overlay one with the other, and I'm sorry the software I have isn't brilliant, but here are my efforts.  I do think that these men could be very closely related but the bit to look out for is the difference in the shape and position of the ears in the red/green transparency.  My personal feeling is that the difference is too much to be explained by the slight forward tilt of the 'ear' mans head. The lines on the first photo are part of my checking that they are lined up as closely as possible.

Any comments?
Regards
KJ

[Suziesmith37]

Hi Kate

Brilliant analysis - as you have said hat/tilt/etc very difficult to judge.  The overlays do help look at key points though.

Ear does appear now to be in a slightly lower position as well.

Poss then a member of the same family but not the same man?

Any comments from cmitmcm?  Certainly a good puzzle that you have set!

Su

[cmcm1]

thank you all so much for your help,
we had an family emergency
so sorry I didn't get back sooner

awesome work KateJones  how do you do that

we know of atleast 3 men from the same family that were in ww1 but don't have photo's of all
any idea how old the man in the uniform would be that might narrow it down a little


Thank you all again so much sorry for getting back sooner

[Suziesmith37]

Hi cmitmcm

I do hope your family emergency is over and are ok!

I would guess the man to be about 19/20/21 very difficult - he has such a youthful complexion.

Do you know if they all/any survived the war?

Presumably at least one - as you have a photo of an older man

Su

[cmcm1]

Hi KJ
here's the photo I PM you about which one do you think he is also how did you do the overlaying ??
Thanks again for all you help everyone

[KateJones]

Hi, received your PM, I'm afraid that my classes are waiting, and I've only checked in while I saved some work onto a USB drive for my A level class today.  I'll have a look at this later on.

I'm actually using a fairly old computer which wheezes a lot, and gets upset if you try and ask it to do very much at any one time, so I've been using an old version of MS PhotoDraw for the transparency, and changing the colour of the picture.  For cutting out sections and adding the comments I'm using software called SnagIt, which allows you to take cut out sections of screen and add comments (in fact it's far cleverer than that, but I'm still finding my feet with it - I only went on the course very recently).  There are of course, quite a few programs which will do the same sort of thing as both of these.

By the way, just a gut feeling, nothing more at the moment - I think the guy on the left is more likely to be the same one as the one in the middle.  The man on the right has more arched eyebrows, and the 'corner' of his jaw juts out more. 

Oh, I agree about the likely age for the man in uniform - very difficult to tell, but I would go with 20 plus or minus one or two .

Can I ask what resolution you've scanned the two new people, please?  It would help me to have them at quite a high resolution (at least 300 dpi, and possibly even 600 dpi if possible) - so that I can enlarge them quite a bit for lining up.
Cheers
KJ