It was a dark and foggy night …

It was a dark and foggy night … visibility was a few yards, not many lights besides the streetlight to reveal any detail. Yes, my friends, this is a mystery story. But fear not, I will not bore you with dull and dreary prose, my flair is photography.

Even on the camera monitor this looked pretty dull and dreary. No photo masterpiece potential here. Maybe the “art department” can make something with these frames. Always a chuckle there.

So I decided to use flash. Now, mind you, I fully expected the result to be closer to a view of a photo gray card than a useful picture, but what I got surprised me. Let me show you. I enhanced the contrast so you can see better the object of my astonishment.

Are these ghosts, small-scale turbulences in the fog, condensation on the lens, ghosts, GHOSTS?

Have you ever photographed fog with on-camera flash? This is the way to bring out ghosts where there are none!

OK, have you figured it out yet? Inspect more closely. Note that the “ghosts” are made up of various sized uniform circles. Circles! Bokey circles, out-of-focus, blurred images of points of light. Yes, the fog consists of tiny drops of water. It was thick, as I told you. There were enough of these small drops floating in front of the camera to act as tiny bright specks, illuminated by the flash.

.:.

© 2012 Ludwig Keck