The subject of 'Orb Photographs' has become very involved in recent years, and it is difficult not to have read articles in magazines and on websites making all manner of claims over this 'new' photographic phenomenon. Contrary to statements being made, this is not new - I have been researching these types of photographs for a decade now. My conclusions may be seen as swimming against the tide, but I am not simply debunking; all I wish to do is look at the real paranormal phenomena that do exist. I do not mean to offend in saying that people are tending to ignore a number of basics in an effort to see things they want to see – this is human nature. However, surely the ideal should be objective analysis and research in order to prove the 'reality' of true paranormal phenomena?

Lets look back at some very basic history, and examine the implications on these 'Orb photos'. A frequent argument being put forward is that these orbs are new, and have only been seen in the days of digital photography, as if this is some sort of proof of some new mystery – nothing could be further from the truth. My research started in 1993, with 35mm photography, and I was able to reproduce – or perhaps a more fitting term is replicate - the same sort of anomalies from the outset. However, let's go back further, and examine why orbs were not regularly captured on film even 20 years ago, let alone 30 or 40 years ago...

Oh well, time to own up to my age - 46 - but this does mean that I can remember when personal photography was very different! I don't go quite back to the days of the Box Brownie (though my parents did have one). I had my first camera in around 1965, a small child's camera, I can't even remember the manufacturer, but it took 120mm roll film (still in use today in some medium-format cameras), and had two controls – the shutter button and the film advance thumbwheel. In those days the only film option was 'black and white' (why did it always have this misnomer for greyscale?), with relatively slow emulsions that required good daylight to record anything, and photography was proportionally very expensive – one didn't use frames of film without reason, and a film had to last many weeks if not months, just down to simple costs. As for flash photography – forget it! Think back to the days before electronic flashguns, to the days of 'old-fashioned' use-once flash bulbs (complete with their explosive chemicals and wire wool), these cost as much as a film, and again were proportionally very expensive – again one didn't fire these off for the fun of it. Another factor was developing and printing, another proportionally expensive process. Photographic processing itself was a very different affair then as well, with no fancy computerised system automatically developing the film and printing the enprints – it was all done by hand, by an experienced photographic lab technician. These technicians seldom printed photos they didn't think looked 'proper' – I well recall the difficulty in getting my first attempt at SFX photography (a small model of Thunderbird 3 suspended from the washing line!) printed in around 1968, as the lab insisted it must be a 'mistake'! So what are the implications for searching archives for 'old' orb photos? Simple, there will be very few night-time photos taken with flash – so there will be very few photos to search as reference.

Let's move forward a little to the 1970s, when photography started to become more popular and cheaper – in many ways the Kodak Instamatic with its 126 cartridge film revolutionised popular photography – it even introduced a new concept in the flash cube. However, the film and processing were still relatively expensive, and the flash cubes were still once-only usage, and were again still quite expensive – so again no-one was out firing off hundreds of frames of film for the fun of it. Certainly I would have been doing well to have shot more than 100 frames in a whole year. I got my first 'proper' 35mm camera in 1973, and my first electronic flashgun- did this mean I was suddenly released to take all the photos I wanted? No – cost was still an issue, and the flashguns ate batteries (rechargeable batteries could not be used in those days without frying the transistors – I know from expensive experience...) which still added to the prohibitive cost. It wasn't until the 1980s when 35mm compact cameras (with inbuilt flashgun) started to hit the market that cost-effective and capable equipment gave photographers the tool to go out anywhere and take whatever photos they wanted without the hassle of taking huge amounts of kit. Now users were released to start taking night-time photos with flash – then all they had to do was persuade developing labs to print them! Even in those days, I thought I was taking loads of photos if I took three or four films while away on a week's holiday – lets see, that's a staggering 140-odd photos in a whole week! It wasn't until 1994 that I started to look seriously at trying to reproduce the anomaly photos being produced by others – notably Bob Boyd and the Plymouth UFO Group, as well as members of the Cornwall branch of the CCCS – that I started to really take 100's of night-time photos – and yes, I was able to capture the same sort of anomaly, though it should be noted that I was deliberately looking for known artefacts – moisture, smoke, dust, pollen etc. Even in those days I shuddered at the cost of this 'research' – at times I had four cameras in use at any one time, and I stopped counting when I passed spending £2000 on films and processing in less than a year... No, I didn't start counting again, and the digital age couldn't come fast enough, not that we knew what it was back then!

I first joined the age of the digital camera and medium in 1998, and from that point on my quantity of photos rocketed. Most market research confirms that when they move to digital, photographers take 10 – 20 times the number of photos they did with old analogue emulsion. In my case this number is well over 20 - 30 times the number of images - like I said above, at one time I thought taking 150 photos a week was excessive, now I think nothing of taking 300 – 400 images a day. Digital photography has brought in different limitations, its no longer the cost of film to consider on any one day, but the capacity of storage media and how many rechargeable batteries one has at any one time.

Right, let's do some simple maths to examine why 'orbs' are incorrectly perceived as a 'new' phenomenon. I consider myself as a normal keen photographer (these days often referred to as a 'prosumer'), and my figures here will be nothing unusual, but in 1973 I might have taken 100 photos in the whole year, and none of these would have been at night with flash, deliberately looking for anomalies. Move forward 30 years to 2003, and I'm now taking in excess of 30,000 images a year, if even 10% of those are night-time shots deliberately looking for these orb anomalies, that's 3000 deliberate images against zero 30 years previously – i.e. in 1973 I had a zero probability of capturing any night-time orb anomaly!

OK, that was a brief look at how photography has evolved to the point whereby many people are photographing what they then may misinterpret as 'Spirit Orbs' or some other form of paranormal anomaly. At this point its worthwhile considering the camera itself, and a bit of basic photography, all of which are very relevant when it comes to interpreting and analyzing such anomaly images, and which I have to say is forgotten all too often.

When people are out there with their cameras snapping away seeking anomalous images - how many are taking notice of their camera and flash settings? What aperture did the camera use? What shutter speed did it use? What is the guide number of their flash? This is one area that is easier with the digital medium and information being saved as part of the digital file, but for those people with analogue mediums, much of this information will end up as guesswork.
Let's assume that the photographer has their camera on 'automatic' in order to give optimum settings for any photo. This will be dependent on a large range of factors, mainly driven by the film speed (the ASA/ISO rating) - even the 'pseudo' film speed on a digital camera - and the available light at the time the photo was taken; which will then determine the aperture and shutter speed. If the camera has a zoom lens then these values will again change depending on the focal length in use. All of these will contribute to just how the camera records the image on its recording medium - whether that is analogue or digital. Also keep in mind that a digital camera will capture more light with its CCD than its analogue counterpart and its film - so this again will result in different exposures. A slow film (ISO 100 or below) will also force the camera into using any inbuilt flash on a regular basis, even in apparently fairly bright conditions. On top of this we need to look at the lenses themselves. The number of elements will relate to possible internal barrel reflections and distortions - which are more prevalent in compact-type cameras than 'near-SLR' or SLR cameras.

Hopefully most camera users, and indeed all photographers, reading this article will have at least heard of 'depth of field', and hopefully will understand the implications? In simple terms, the aperture (or f-number) determines the range in which objects in front of the lens will be in sharp focus. If the lens aperture is wide then the resulting image will have a wider range of sharp focus - a wider depth of field. If the lens aperture is small then vice versa occurs. From this is it easy to see how a camera capturing images in automatic mode might artificially depict objects close to the camera that are defocused or fuzzy when compared to the midground and background - we'll assume here that the camera is at least trying to auto-focus on objects that are centre-frame. If anyone wants to look at the dramatic effects of depth of field go to a library and look at any book on serious photography; or if you have a camera with manual settings - photograph a scene several times over, but changing the aperture through its full range, the shutter speed through its full range, and lens through it full focal range - look at the difference in the resultant images!
Let's not forget here the possible effects of the camera's infra-red (IR) focussing system - this too may create false images close to the lens, especially if the camera is in any form of 'night-mode'. If anyone doubts the possible effects of IR reflections, I suggest they point a TV or VCR remote control at the camera - for the most obvious results, try this with a modern camcorder and watch the pseudo-laser display!

Another factor of these orb photos that is frequently claimed, is that none of these are visible to the naked eye – I say this is incorrect. I would recommend that anyone attempting to capture these sort of photos should refrain from looking through the camera's viewfinder, or looking at its screen. Instead, look across the top of the camera when you trip the shutter and fire the flash – I can guarantee you will now see small points of light, almost like sparks. Why does the eye only see these small spark-like returns when the film or CCD records larger 'orbs' – quite simple, the human eye cannot process the full scope of the image within the short burst of the camera flash. The human eye only 'processes' images at around the rate – an effective 'frame rate' - of 1/20th second, whereas the typical camera flash will illuminate between 1/125th and 1/60th second – so thinking in 'digital' terms, the human eye will only get about 1/3rd of the available data! The old adage states that "The camera never lies", however, I think it would be truer to say "The camera never lies, but it deceives the eye".


I've probably bored everyone with the technical aspects now - but they are valid and need careful consideration. Let's move on to where my own research was focussed (forgive the pun) in much of its early years...

Although I'd heard rumours of anomalous photos in 1993, it wasn't until the summer of 1994 that photographs began to circulate freely - which was when I became involved while I was a member of Contact UK. The vast majority of these early 'orb photos' were taken in the Southwest of England, which were taken in crop circles at dusk or even at night, and often during drizzle; this immediately raised concerns to me. Notwithstanding any 'paranormal' aspect, here we had photos being taken in a situation – i.e. in a ripe cereal crop - where dust and all manner of small insects (if any of you think of those small black bugs as 'thunderblight' you are wrong, they are 'harvest bugs' - I know from 17 years in the grain and malting trade!) that would be present in front of the camera and flash. We also had obvious small droplets of moisture on occasions - surely a recipe for spurious images? While I have no doubt that PUFORG and others were being careful and vigilant when taking such photos, the sceptic in all of us urges each of us to make our own effort to prove or disprove ideas and theories - this is where I started. While others in Contact UK such as Geoff Ambler immediately achieved results in capturing very different anomalies which still baffle to this day, I set out to deliberately record photos of known atmospheric conditions, for reference to the claimed 'anomalous orbs' (back in those days I don't even think the term 'spirit orb' was being used to describe these). At one point in the research we even started experimenting with deliberately leaving lens caps on, just in case the anomalies were not actually in front of the camera at all, but perhaps were more 'psychic' in nature (akin to the 'thoughtography' of Ted Serios), but sadly these never proved successful, so the 'phenomenon' was in front of the lens.

My own research effort covered precipitation effects (such as mist, drizzle, rain. snow and hail) as well as particulates (dust, pollen and smoke), and insects etc. I note that in the reports from the SPI National Skywatch in Rendlesham Forest in August 2003 that many people were capturing 'orbs' as they wandered round the forest at night while continually taking photos - now, let's think logically here... The forest floor is pretty dusty in the summer months anyway, but this was after one of the driest summers in Britain for over 20 years, and here we had 40-odd people tramping through the undergrowth – is it any surprise that cameras were picking up numerous orb-like particulate reflections?

It is certainly no coincidence that night-time photos taken at my home - notably in the winter months - captured 'orbs' more frequently before 1996 - when I had to move home about 100m. The reason was simple, the estate was redeveloped, with modern homes replacing homes originally built in the 1940s. What was the one significant factor here - previously the homes had coal-burning fires, complete with various pollutants and particles being pushed out into the air; now they had modern efficient gas boilers, with very little pollution and particulates - so a massive reduction in the amount of 'orb-inducing' particulates.

One facet of some of the orb photos that did originally prove puzzling were the photos that appeared to show patterns and even 'faces' in the orbs. Eventually I realised how moisture droplets in the air could create such patterns while a camera flash was firing. Ironically this was spotted during a damp skywatch night when I noticed the pattern my torch was casting on the ground, with all manner of light and dark patterns - caused by droplets of moisture on the torch lens lensing light and refracting to cause shadows. The same effect can be seen with any lens, a strong light and a reflecting surface such as a wall - yes, the effect is real, and must be considered, however unpalatable it may be. From this it is not impossible to see how the light from the camera flash could be lensed to form both light and dark patterns on nearby objects - whether they were particulates, moisture droplets or anything else.


Some examples of the results of my own experiments and research are shown here for your consideration - keep in mind that most of these images were originally recorded on 35mm print or slide film between 1994 and 1997 (with Panasonic C900Z, or Samsung 1050 compact cameras), and not the digital medium that many think is solely capable of recording such images.
 

Do these anomalies not bear an uncanny resemblance to the vast majority of claimed spirit orb photos recorded today? I am certainly not debunking all orb photos, but I would urge that we all take a little more care in analysis, and consider all the factors which go to make up the resultant image, not just interpret what see because it suits our own belief.

Remember, I am not a debunker here, I am merely looking for true anomalies and paranormal phenomena, which may not be as common as we might like to wish. Perhaps a good rule of thumb here is that if an 'orb' needs the camera flash in order to be seen, then its probably a camera artefact? Much as the infamous statistical surveys suggest that as few as 5% of all UFO cases may be truly unusual and unexplained, I suspect that after proper analysis, fewer than 5% of claimed 'orb photos' will depict true paranormal events. I know that true paranormal orbs are being seen and photographed, so please let's put the effort into researching the true paranormal phenomena.

If any of you doubt my own agenda and indeed efforts into this type of research, I'll close with a photo that has been published in UFO Magazine before (June 1995), but its a reminder of anomalies that can be captured. Keep in mind though this is just one photo out of several tens of thousands that I have taken, and I have never been fortunate enough to capture this sort of anomaly again...

All photos (C) Brian P James