Last night I was at a London Bloggers Meetup and one of the other bloggers present asked me if I would take a look at some photographs she had posted on her ‘Shaman UK‘ site of ‘orbs’ and tell her what I thought about how they might be caused.
What I found was one image of orbs – a rather nice example – and a number showing illuminated blurs well outside the orb zone – perhaps insects or even small birds. Orbs are actually circles of confusion, out of focus images of the lens iris caused by light reflected from small particles too close to be brought to a focus.
The orb image – with the two cats – still contains its Exif data, and it’s interesting to see that it was taken on a Nikon D40X using flash at 1/60, f3.5 (full aperture) with a focal length of 18mm (27mm equiv.) This is interesting, since ‘orb’ pictures are much more common with small sensor cameras; also unusual is the blog author’s comment, about some other images, that she was “actually seeing the orbs through the view-finder prior to pressing the shutter. ”
You can read a considerably amount about orbs, and the Orb Zone Theory of how they are produced – and how to make them – on the ASSAP site (Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena) which also has an interesting feature Paranormal photos and analysing them. The book also gives some advice should you want to produce your own ‘orb’ images (though my own advice would probably be to consult a doctor.)
Looking at the pictures showing flash reflections from objects in the air reminded me of Martin Parr‘s 1982 book, “Bad Weather” and I wandered to the shelf where I thought I might find it, but it wasn’t there. I hope I still have it somewhere around the house, partly because I still think it (his first book) is probably also his most interesting, but also because it now sells for silly prices. There used to be a gallery of images from the book on the Magnum site, but it is no longer there, and a search (enter ‘bad weather Parr’) now only brings up ten pictures from the book (plus one unrelated colour picture.) You can also (with difficulty and persistence) find the book on Parr’s own web site. Clicking twice at the bottom right corner of the cover image then allows you to look ata pair of images from the book which have a similar effect to those here, his flash illuminating the falling flakes in the right hand picture (click again for a few more images from the book.)
The image on the left of the pair I think shows a similar effect with rain drops, which are all apparently moving upwards, as a result of the flash at the start of the exposure followed by a tailing off effect as they continue to fall. It’s like photographing other moving objects with a slow shutter speed, to get a light trail behind the object you need to use rear-curtain flash – probably not an option on the camera Parr was using, but I’m sure he would in any case prefer the odder effect given in his picture.
Parr of course deliberately went out in bad weather, while ‘Shaman UK‘ chose more pleasant times and at least on one occasion a location close to the Tom Cobley pub. As she says “spending time on warm evenings, in a beautiful location, with good company, human and animal, while photographing Nature, was wonderful and also fun.”
“Summer Nights” is another of my favourite photography books, by Robert Adams, and the V&A have a nice little piece on it with a dozen images, mainly taken around twilight (click on them for larger versions.) There are possibly some among those of his pictures on the Fraenkel Gallery site, but that – like Parr’s – is another though very different text-book example of how not to write a web site, and I gave up before finding out.