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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Thursday, October 14, 2010

CARL PORTMAN: Norwegian strangeness

My dear Jon,

Here’s one. It IS genuine but a little weird to say the least. Take a look at the attached photograph. I took this on board a ship in Norway heading north for Trondheim. We sailed past a rather curious building and I thought I would photograph it just as the sun was going down, as did several other passengers. They had just photographed it, and I was last to arrive just in time to get a quick snap before we passed the building.

Just as I was about to press the shutter a beam of golden sunlight lit up the structure – nothing else, just that! Naturally I took the shot but when I looked again there was a strange golden ball to the left of the picture. Neither my pal nor anyone else around me had the same impression and I had this on the two shots I took. There was nothing wrong with the camera.

How curious that this shard of sunlight hit at the moment I took the shot and the golden ball, made up of several smaller balls appeared like some mass ball of energy hurtling through the air on my photograph.

It could be a glitch with my camera (doubtful) or I may have been lucky enough to have photographed something extraordinary – a ball of energy or something else emanating from the last but sudden warm rays of the sun in sub zero temperatures.

I don’t have the answer but I hope you find it interesting. The photograph is not doctored in any way.

Carl

5 comments:

Richard Muirhead said...

Was the weather thundery at the time?Could it have been ball lightening?

Anonymous said...

This is most likely down to internal reflections inside the camera lens system. That central area of reflected light will be extremely bright, but if the camera uses the entire image as a way of metering the light levels, then the iris will be quite wide open and will allow quite a lot of light into the camera.

This will reflect back off the surfaces of the lens train inside the camera, and give rise to the artefact that you see in the picture.

Did you see this artefact with the naked eye before or after you took the photo?

Syd said...

What a magnificent shot.
I am certainly no expert photographic analyst, but would suggest that the effect we are seeing, is a "Lens Flare" due to the suns rays being reflected back from the windows of the building, into the camera lens.
This effect is quite common and is without shadow of doubt the cause of many (if not most) of the claimed photographs of UFOs and ghosts.

Carl said...

Hello folks,
The weather was calm and not thundery at all. I never saw the ball before or after with my naked eye. Naturally I have had to form the opinion that it is camera/lens related but I wanted to share the photograph with you all - shame to waste it. I did take literally hundreds of other sun shots on that trip with no extra images on the camera. I guess it is just timing.Thank you.

Carl said...

The weather was calm and not thundery. I never saw the ball with my naked eye but the sunlight happened in a flash, literally. I do accept it must be camera/lens related but it is still an interesting photograph I hope you agree. I took literally hundreds of sunsets and reflections on that trip and no other photograph showed this. It's all about timing and light and all good fun anyway. Thank you...