Dave Kay's Tracking Page

Track Image Processing: Print Awareness: Grass

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How's your print awareness in grass? Grass is one of the toughest tracking surfaces, according to Tom Brown. It's not so bad immediately after a print is made, but even then it can still be pretty tough. (In grass, tracking by touch, not vision, is one of the more effective methods.)

One of the two photos below contains a print of my foot. The other, showing exactly the same area, doesn't. Although it shouldn't matter much, I've turned the two pictures sideways so they will fit side-by-side on your screen. (The bottoms of the photographs are to your right.) This way, if you are familiar with the cross-eyed viewing method I describe in my Print Awareness: Debris page, you can use that to see where the print area is. (Tip: cross your eyes so that the two X's merge.) If you find the sideways-nature of the prints annoying, try printing the page out and turning it sideways. Or send me gripe-mail.

Here are a few questions to sharpen your visual skills:

Can you tell which photo contains the print?
Extra credit: Which foot is it?
More extra credit: Which way was I walking?
Even more extra credit: What sort of footwear (if any) was I wearing?

By the way -- I'm no tracking genius. I would be hard-pressed to answer questions 2-4 myself if I didn't already know the answers!

Need help finding the print? Here are...

a computer-processed image showing the area of the print.
a GIF animation showing the area of the print.