• Chapter 1: Energy Creatures 2002-05-10
• Chapter 2: Spooky Photos 2003-06-12
• Bonus feature: Randi and the Creature 2003-12-04

Photo to the right: Me and my grey eyes in yet another in-camera trick.
Thanks to Antti Rasinen for the idea.

(And no, I've already given away too many of my favourite simple tricks on this page; figure this one out yourselves. It's not that hard.)

Chapter 1: Energy Creatures 2002-05-10

I used a Canon Powershot G2 digital camera to achieve the following images. No tampering has been done to the photos except edge cutting, rescaling, and adding borders around the pictures. The most essential thing, energy creatures, are exactly as the camera captured them.

All photos were shot with ASA 50 sensitivity setting.

This first photo pair shows how a photo should be shot if there is sufficient light. Here, all room lights are on, as can be seen from the reflection in the monitor. Note the green LED in the zoomed image.

If there isn't enough light, one can always use the camera's built-in flash. In this case, there are some shadows on the walls, but the image still looks good. Again, have a look at the green LED in the zoomed image, as that will soom become very important.

In this picture the room lights have been shut off so that the room is relatively dimly lit. Because the flash is the dominant light source, colours are good and neutral, pretty much as in the picture before.

Wow, ouch! As can be seen, the energy creature is nipping at my fingertip. And it seems to like the reindeer, too!

Seriously: in this picture, I reduced the amount of light coming to the camera by using a much smaller aperture. As another thing, I added considerably to the exposure time. This way, by jiggling the camera while taking the picture, bright light sources can be made into exciting energy creatures.

What happens here is that first the flash flashes, and most of the picture is exposed. However, during the 2s exposure time, when the camera is jiggled, both the LEDs and to a lesser extent the rest of the picture, is still being exposed. This results in a somewhat blurry and often yellowish experience, much like the original photo of the Russian chess player. The yellowness comes from the fact that typical lights are yellow-coloured compared to quite blueish flashes. Thus, if the picture colour temperature is set to give neutral colours with a flash, all other lights will appear yellow, or even orange.

If the light source would be a bit brighter, this very same effect could be realised with much shorter exposure times. Some years ago, I tried to photograph a bat in a sauna with 1/60s exposure time, and got quite similar results as this, sans the energy creature (saunas don't have LEDs!).

Here we have two energy creatures gone completely wild! As they are going in quite similar tracks, we must assume that they are be mating, and that one of the creatures is a male and the other a female. Who would have believed in that just by going to our engine room we'd be the first people ever to shoot the very first erotic material of two genuine energy creatures! But which one is which? I'd vote for the red to be The She-Creature as it seems to drag along some red offspring.

On the serious side: the effect of a flashing red hard disk light that just happened to blink while taking this photo looks quite nice, does it not?

Here is a final picture where I and my wife trade places and I try to take a energy creature photo without a flash. As can be seen, the picture is completely blurry.

In the previous three pictures, when a flash was used, most of the light came from the very moment of the flash blink. Thus, we were able to get a picture that looked relatively sharp. However, in this picture no point of time is more important than the other, and thus the result is just boringly blurry. As Randi seemed a bit vary in believing that a flash was used in the Russian photo, we tried for a while to take a photo similar to it without a flash, but as expected, our half-hearted attempts failed.

Comparisons

Conclusions

Henrik Herranen, Finland,
with the helping hand of my beloved wife, Emma Herranen

Chapter 2: Spooky Photos 2003-06-12

It should be noted here that the three photos in question are not a result of intentional trick photography, but rather of unfortunate photographing errors. In this article I try to explain how you can end up with these kinds of photos, and perhaps even more importantly, how to avoid them.

I used our new Canon Powershot G3 digital camera to achieve the following images. No tampering has been done to the photos except edge cutting, rescaling, and adding borders around pictures. The spooky lines are exactly as the camera captured them.

All photos were shot with ASA 50 sensitivity setting, unless otherwise noted.

The Problem of the Originals

What has happened? Are there weird energy creatures? Or have the special effects guys from the original film Metropolis (1927) been re-animated and they've taken over the local photo lab? Luckily no such claim was made by the original photographer, because there is a completely earthly explanation for all this.

Many cameras have different kinds of automatic programs. While some cameras let you (and some even force you to) set everything by hand, some others use automatic programs for pretty much everything. Yet, in some other cameras you may choose your automatic programs.

In the picture on the right, you can see the controls of the Canon Powershot G3 digital camera. When the control wheel is seto to AUTO, everything from focus, aperture, exposure time and sensitivity upto whether a flash is to be used is selected automatically. In addition, the maximum exposure time is limited to 1/8 second. With this setting, it is quite difficult to get the effects shown in the photo above.

However, if you turn the control wheel four notches up, until the black picture with a human being and a star is selected, this changes. This setting is meant to be used when using a flash to highlight images in the foreground while using time exposure to let the darker background to show. Ideally, and when properly used, this setting can give very aesthetic results, as shown below.

Photo taken 2003-05-17 23:03. Parameters: ISO 100, t=2.0s, f=3.5

In this picture the just-married couple (congratulations Juha and Outi!) were mostly lit with the camera flash, while the misty landscape required some two seconds to record "on film".

However, to create a picture as the one above, everything and everyone have to remain still for the full duration of the exposure. This includes both the camera which has to be on a tripod or other stable support mechanism for the shoot as well as the two people, who'se movement would cause subtle shadows resembling special effect movies' matte effects to appear.

Now that we've seen how to take a flash-and-time-exposure properly, we'll go back to the original photos and see what went wrong with them.

The problem and their reason is perhaps most evident in the rightmost picture, with a woman sitting at a table. Here we can clearly see two candles on the table. What has most certainly happened is that the photographer has pushed the trigger, and as the flash has gone off, (s)he has thought that the picture has been taken and thus (s)he has not stood still but instead lowered or turned the camera. However, the camera was still recording ambient light for a few seconds. Result: yellowish candle lights wander all over the picture. This very same phenomenon is also visible in the other pictures: wherever there is a yellow line, there is a candle (any light source would of course do). The thick fuzzy line in the first picture might be a triple-glazing window reflection of the candle or a chandelier, although it's difficult to tell from such a small original.

Failing with Style

First we'll need a camera and a darkened room. Because it's summertime in Finland, finding a dark room is a bit hard, but a somewhat darkened one will suffice. We'll start with a haunted living room.

Parameters: t=1.0s, f=5.6

In this picture, we see energy creatures trying to escape their respective candles. The reason for the escape is made obvious in a close-up: If you look closely, you'll find a book so profane that even the title has two four-letter F-words in it, and there are many groups who would like to see the title burn _{burn burn}.

Back to reality: the picture is shot using a flash to provide most of the light. Then, during a one-second exposure the camera is wobbled to make candle flames form a dance of light. At the same time light reflections from the living room window form a fuzzy area on the left door of the cupboard.

Here we've gone wild: my wife Emma is moving a small flashlight (white light) at the same time as I am again wobbling the camera to get the light show. The yellow light at the top is from a cupboard lamp that is not otherwise visible in the photo.

Here we have moved to the bedroom to get some more spooky mayhem. As before, the camera flash is used to light the scene, and time exposure lets the candle flames form lines. By carefully rotating and moving the camera and with a bit of luck, it is relatively easy to make it look like the flame tails are moving in independent directions.

In any horror movie, a light or dark line cutting someone's throat usually means that person is going to die horribly within the next twenty minutes. So, if you want to murder your mother-in-law without getting caught, why not ask her to sit down for a nice picture? Then you arrange for a lamp to be off-screen, and right after the flash has blinked you turn the camera swiftly to the left. With repeated tries you'll succeed in cutting her throat. And if that doesn't work, you'll impress her by taking seventy pictures of her "for the family album".

The photo on the right shows the setup for the picture on the left. There are three candles, one incandescent lamp, and the flashlight in Emma's hand.

You can always summon a ghost of a not-yet-quite-dead-but-nevertheless-with-an-almost-broken-leg-so-i-suppose-it's-better-than-nothing husband in a spiritual seance if you just know how. In these digital times, this picture would easily be created with Photoshop, Gimp or any other image manipulation tool. However, it's not that hard to create the entire scene in-camera. Before reading the following spoilers, why not try first to think for yourself how this picture could have been shot?

Oh, you didn't? Ok, doesn't matter.

First, Emma has risen her hands up. Then, as the exposure has begun, she has lowered the nice Kosta Boda snowballs down to make the wavy trails above the candles. When the candles were down it was time for me to jump down to the floor as fast as I could with my somewhat non-perfect leg. Because I was there only for half of the total exposure time, I am quite transparent. If you look closely, you can see that Emma's hands also are ever-so-slightly transparent because they have been in the same place only roughly 12 seconds of the total 15-second exposure.

A flash was not used for this picture.

Here we have summoned some Blue Thunder. This picture is shot using a weak flash, followed by moving the camera closer and closer to a plasma ball during the next four seconds. This will make it appear like some plasma has escaped the glass ball.

Comparisons

Conclusions

Henrik (and Emma) Herranen, Finland

Bonus Photo

2002-10-01 23:57, Canon PowerShot G2
Parameters: ISO 100, t=10s, f=2.0

In this photo, I managed to make the mistake of turning the camera just before the end of the ten-second exposure. The result: city lights that shouldn't be visible in the picture at all form exciting stripes. I didn't delete this picture because I thought it was fun.

Actually, if we take a closer look at the picture, we'll see another interesting piece of oddity. Look at the following, unscaled excerpt of the picture:

Why are the lines broken instead of being continuous?

The reason is that the lamps forming the lines are all AC powered, and they actually react fast enough to flash on and off twice every Alternating Current power cycle. In other words, with our 50 Hz A/C power frequency, the lights flash 100 times a second. This blinking, normally invisible to the naked eye, which is typical of almost every A/C lamp type apart from incandescent lamps (which show this phenomenon to a much lesser degree), causes the lines to be broken.

Randi and The Creature 2003-12-04

Here I have been able to capture on my G3 a picture of an energy creature right in the middle of Randi's beard while he is receiving a Pigasus! Who'd believe he'd be so much honoured by the world he so strongly denies?

Actually, the creature is a red LED on the microphone in front of Randi. Also, I have taken the picture with a far too long exposure time, and while the camera was exposing, someone else's camera's flash has gone off. Nevertheless, a genuine and quite accidental Energy Creature has been born. And then you wonder why the belivers think that Randi does have the special powers that he himself denies.