Moth trails? Insects as scribes?
A recent article at Photojojo, Light Painting with Moth Trails, caught my attention. It answers a few questions and raises some possibilities.
First, it gives a clear (and exaggerated) example of how insects can create false anomalies.
If you aren’t checking for [...]
“Ghost boy” appeared in a widely-publicized photo in late February 2010.
The story was: A British builder took the photo at a school in England that was being demolished. When he reviewed the pictures he took of the demolotion process, he saw the image of a little boy in one photo, and the builder claimed [...]
Snow creates orbs. That’s not news, but I wanted to experiment with snow effects for my upcoming book, Ghost Photography 101*.
In general, snow seems to add so many anomalies — and different kinds of anomalies — I’d have to discount all of them in investigation photos.
That said, the effects were interesting when I [...]
When I first saw the YouTube video (shown below) of an orb floating around a Kansas City gym, I thought it was an insect flying in front of the camera.
The movement isn’t consistent with a bit of dust in a closed room, even with fans [...]
original photo (unretouched)
scanned image, outlined
We took the photo on our webpage, Ghost Hunters – Ecto and Smoke, as part of a controlled experiment. We were demonstrating how smoke can look like “ecto” in photos.
However, although this picture was not taken in a “haunted” location, we wonder [...]
We often see photos that claim to display ‘ectoplasm’ but actually show smoke. Even if someone had been smoking 20 minutes earlier, smoke particulate lingers in the air and can reflect light. This is easy to confuse with genuine anomalies.
Here are some results from our initial study of cigarette smoke.
The photo [...]
False ‘ghost orbs’ and anomalies can happen to anyone, even professional ghost hunters.
On damp or rainy nights, most of our photos include false anomalies. (We take photos anyway. After all, we might capture something genuine in our pictures.)
But, many of the photos that we receive in email are clearly false orbs. That’s [...]
In this podcast, Fiona Broome talks about real and false orbs in photos.
These may sound like ‘common sense’ tips to some, but you might be surprised at how many people forget these things when they think they’ve photographed a ghostly orb.
*Note: Fiona’s opinions have changed since recording this. During 2009, she spent [...]
False ‘ghost orbs’ can be caused by holiday lights. It’s fairly rare, but worth mentioning. Take a look at the bluish orb in the picture below. It’s at the far right side of the photo, almost at the middle of that side.
This false orb was only one in about 50 photos [...]
False ghost anomalies can appear in photos if hair is in the way. The ‘ghost photo’ below shows a dark vertical shadow near the center of the picture.
At right you can see the same photo with white lines on either side of where the anomaly appears to be. That shadow was [...]
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