Spooky images

This could be the wrong section for this post, so Mods please feel free to move as you see fit.

The cottingley faries were fake, but never the less interesting –

http://hoaxes.org/photo_database/image/the_cottingley_fairies/

Have you ever photographed something that when processed seemed to defy the natural laws of physics and fall into a mystical experience that you can’t explain. I think I have seen glimpses or sparks from images by others that fall into this realm, but nothing of my own that I think fits this description.

Once ever 3 or 4 years I end up with a well-composed photo, does that count?

I once photographed an abandoned church. It was much later when I made a print that I saw a vague face peering out of a window at me. Since the church was in the middle of nowhere it would seem to preclude someone squatting there.

I've got something kind of spooky... there is one ( and only one ) place that I've made solargraphs that show a weird aura or mist. I'm not sure what causes it but it looks creepy and ghostly. The last one almost looks like misty figures rising up out of the ground, and kind of gives me a creepy shivery feeling to look at it. Something you can only see if you look at the same place for 6 months!

Now the question is whether I can post them here in this thread.... a solargraph is made from a piece of photopaper as the negative, then scanned and the colors are inverted ( and then just level adjust ). So the processing is not really any different from a scanned and inverted color negative on film like you might see in the APUG gallery, or a scanned and inverted black and white negative like you might see in the gallery. The only difference from those is that it is a paper negative rather than a film negative. Well, and also, I still don't know how to make a physical positive print from one, so I can't say it represents what a physical print would look like ( yet! )

So far I have not posted any on APUG but only on DPUG. I've made a few attempts at analog color reversal, but without much luck. Or I could just post links to the pictures here I suppose. I'll see if I can find the original scans before inverting the colors... those represent the actual physical paper... I don't remember how visible the ghostly mist/fog are on those, or even if I have the original scans of all of them....

Gerald C Koch said:

I once photographed an abandoned church. It was much later when I made a print that I saw a vague face peering out of a window at me. Since the church was in the middle of nowhere it would seem to preclude someone squatting there.

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Probably a homeless bum or drug addict?

You can see the mist on the originals, but maybe only if you are used to looking at solargraphs and thinking of what they will become.
I'll keep with the spirit of APUG and just post links:

Weird ghostly mist, and also some "ghost leaves"
June-December 2012

This one is even weirder, there almost seem to be ghostly figures sitting on the ground to the right of the tree:
June 2014-July 2015

These next two are in the same location, but don't have the mist:
December 2012-June 2013
March-June 2012

I think the effect is probably caused by fog. The two that went through late summer and fall, when we most often have thick fog, and this location would be hit by morning sunshine while the fog burns off. It probably lights up the fog and makes it glow and leave an image on the paper. I haven't thought of anything else to account for it, and I've never seen it on a solargraph from any other location. Or maybe it's something more mysterious???!!:alien:

I wish! Great topic, however!

gzhuang said:

Probably a homeless bum or drug addict?

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bizarre.

homeless people and drug addicts aren't the only people who hang around abandoned places ... I can think of a few photographers who might fall into that category

on quite another track, can a bum not be homeless?

I've had to explain a few "spirit photos" to folks who wanted to believe they had photographed a ghost. Their camera had metered for low light and adjusted shutter speed accordingly, but it also fired the flash at the beginning of the exposure (called "dragging the shutter"), resulting in some ghostly blurs. They remained unconvinced, though I demonstrated that the effect could be reproduced as often as they liked.

pdeeh said:

bizarre.

homeless people and drug addicts aren't the only people who hang around abandoned places ... I can think of a few photographers who might fall into that category

on quite another track, can a bum not be homeless?

Click to expand...

Thanks for owning up.

You folks don't believe in fairies???