Insects and Photography

Insects and Photography

written for

The S.A. Paranormal Meet-ups

28/7/12

by 

Allen Tiller

Insects are often flying and crawling about in many locations paranormal investigators visit, whether it be cemeteries, abandoned buildings, or even private homes, hotels and mansions, it doesnt matter where you go, the likelihood of a flying insect being present is high.

Most investigators don't even factor in their presence, being more interested in getting EMF readings and other measurements before starting their vigils and EVP sessions.

 At Eidolon Paranormal, we take into consideration the fact that many flying insects may be present at a location and we try to identify them, and if possible take photos of them in action for later comparison, as this is not always possible we have invested in some bug catchers from Toy's-R-Us. 
 

We place our bug catchers in the location to collect a sample of insects, which we can then identify at a later time, making it possible to compare and disregard many photography anomalies based upon the structure of the insect in comparison to orbs and other phenomena in our photos and videos.

There are ways to attract the insects towards your camera for photos, a black light, or insect bug zapper placed underneath the front of your camera tripod will attract certain bugs and moths, allowing you to take the photos you need for later comparison, or you can use our own method from above

What you will notice in your photos is that the “orbs” created from insects are usually of an irregular shape, the further from the camera, the “rounder” they will appear.

If the insect is close to your flash it will usually reflect back to the lens causing a glowing effect around the insect, but the body of the insect, or its wings will usually have shape and definition, but appear glowing and distorted when compared to an insect photo taken without the flash.

Some insects will appear very small and will look like a solid object inside a glowing orb of colour, after trialling the experiments above, you will soon see how to distinguish differing types of smaller insect orbs.

Another common orb is a white orb with a brown “face” like appearance within the orb, in Australia these can often be attributed to Mosquitoes, the smaller body of the mozzie creates less “feedback glow” from the flash but still makes an orb shape, and it's legs often create the illusion, combined with the torso, of a “face" within the orb itself.

For more on Pariedolia please visit our website at:

http://www.eidolonparanormal.net/pareidolia.htm

Many amateur ghost teams and spiritualists post photos of insects online claiming they are “Angels” or “fairies” when quite clearly they are insects, in some of the ones we have come across, even right here in Australia, they are clearly insects, such as moths and gnats.

Eidolon Paranormal is currently undertaking a survey in a local haunted “hotspot” where we are collecting insects at different times of the day/night and in different seasons, to establish the types of flying insects in the area. We are hoping to create an online database for our website, so people that visit the hotspot with little photography knowledge, thinking they have caught something paranormal, can then compare their photo's to our database and debunk their own paranormal photography themselves.

Photo's of our field trips to collect data will be posted at intervals over the coming months.

I would like to thank "MidNite Walkers Paranormal Research Society"  for allowing us the use of some of their photographs for this particular blog

http://midnite-walkers.com/

Allen Tiller

www.eidolonparanormal.net

© 2007 - 2014 Allen Tiller

www.eidolonparanormal.net

All content on “Eidolon Paranormal & The Haunts of Adelaide” sites, blog and corresponding media pages (eg Facebook, twitter etc) is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any means or process without the written permission of the author. © 2012, 2013, 2014

All photos remain the property of their respective copyright owners and are displayed here for the purpose of education, research and review under the copyright act "fair usage" clause.

Some photo's used here on this site are sourced from The Sate Library of South Australia, and The National Library of Australia and http://www.gawler.nowandthen.net.au - all photos are out of copyright and have no usage restrictions implied.

EXIF FILES - What Are They, and How To Access Them?

EXIF FILES - What Are They, and How To Access Them?

Recently it has been brought to my attention that the term "EXIF File" is being thrown around by paranormal teams and investigators, without any real explanation of what it is, what it does, and how it is used. I thought I would take it upon myself to explain to you, Constant Reader, what an EXIF file is, and what it does.

EXIF data can also be found in other photo file formats, these are "RAW" (associated with DSLR) and "TIFF" formats, we may discuss these at a later point.

 The reason behind its prolific use of late has to do with accusations from some sectors of the paranormal community in regards to teams "faking" photographs of ghosts.

EXIF Files are very useful in finding out certain information from when the photo was taken, and if it has been tampered with electronically, this is not by any means infallible information, as you will see as we get further into this research and discussion.

- Allen Tiller

What does EXIF mean?

 The Acronym "EXIF" stands for   "Exchangeable Image File Format"

So What is it?

EXIF is a non-industry-approved standard that was created by the "Japanese Electronic Industries Development Association" to capture data associated with tagging aspects of Smart Phones, Digital Cameras, Scanners, and Audio associated with these media types. It can also capture Geo-location data via satellite in certain smartphones and newer cameras.

The stored information can include but is not limited to,  shutter speeds, date and time a photo was taken, focal length, exposure compensation, metering pattern, and if a flash was used. This is what is known as a "meta tag".

So who uses it?

 Professional Photographers often examine their EXIF data to compare two or three photos taken in succession, as one photo may be considered "successful" whereas two others may not. This gives the photographer visual clues as to what may have gone wrong with the "unsuccessful" photos, allowing one to adjust or compensate in future photographic shoots.

 Paranormal Investigators are often flooded with photos from the public asking "What is it in this photo?", a vast majority of the public is honestly unaware of what an image could be, but there is that small percentage that fake a photo to try and catch an investigator out. This is where EXIF data can be utilised by the investigator to determine if tampering or photo-shopping has been done to the photo, it can also expose the current trend of phone APPs that create ghost images - however, as I said in my opening paragraph, it is not infallible.

So how do I see it?

 To view your EXIF file data you have a few options, the software that came with your digital camera should allow you to view the data. You can also find EXIF web browser plug-ins online, photo editing and organizing programs usually have an option for viewing as well.

 You will find in different programs different terminology used other than EXIF,. In Picasa the term "Photo Information" is used, whereas in Flikr it is referenced as "Properties"

Most Internet Browsers have plug-ins available that will allow you to view the EXIF data of photos posted online. This is useful if you are interested in examining different aspects of photography, or want to improve your own technique.

This link will take you to a site that shows a variety of different EXIF data from various camera makers

 http://www.exif.org/samples.html

Does it have drawbacks?

 Yes, here is a brief sample of drawbacks associated with EXIF data sourced from Wikipedia

   - The Exif standard specifically states that colour depth is always 24 bits. However, many modern cameras, such as the Nikon D70 which captures 36 bits of colour per pixel, can capture significantly more. Since Exif/DCF files cannot represent this colour depth, many manufacturers have developed proprietary, non-compatible Raw image formats.

   - Exif is very often used in images created by scanners, but the standard makes no provisions for any scanner-specific information.

  - There is no way to record time-zone information along with the time, thus rendering the stored time ambiguous.

You stated earlier that EXIF files are not infallible, how so?

 I  always check the EXIF file of any photo sent to me, it allows me to see what settings the camera was on, this is valuable information, as often cameras will be set to " night mode" which opens the shutter for a longer period of time. If the camera is focused on a light source, and that light source or the camera itself moves at any point in the duration of the open shutter, the light will have a streak effect or a glowing effect. Many people mistake this for ghosts, spirits or other phenomena. 

 I also check to see if a photo has been made on an APP, like the infamous ghost making APPS found on Apple's I-Tunes :

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/ghost-capture/id349479650?mt=8

The truth is EXIF data can be altered, changed, lost or deleted, and rather easily too, with a variety of programs available to do so. Here are some links with information about changing EXIF data:

http://www.photosurfer.com/fix-enhance/24/how-to-edit-meta-data-or-add-information-meta-tags-to-photos.aspx 

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Digital-Photo-Tools/Exif-Date-Changer.shtml

Adobe Lightroom 3:

 http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Lightroom/3.0/Using/WS57264460-DC72-4a1f-A665-1E90907A9FFD.html

So as you can see EXIF data is not infallible and not really a valid argument when accusing another of faking a photo, because the reality is, you can never be 100% certain the data is or isn't correct. I normally recommend to all budding paranormal investigators to forget the photography and go with the video, as photography gives you an image and no data, no start and finish point, whereas video gives you a start point, an action point and an endpoint, allowing for better examination of a phenomenon represented by the images - but, video is also fraught with so many possibilities for tampering, editing and faking....but we'll leave that for a later discussion!

Researched & Written by

Allen Tiller