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Cont.
. . .
I
took the top photograph on Sunday 23 February during the
afternoon, purely as a photograph of the inside of the castle
dungeon for this web site. At the time of taking it, I stood
just inside the doorway to the dungeon, which was in almost
total darkness, so dark in fact that it took my eyes quite
some time to adjust so that I could see anything at all.
I shone a powerful beam of light onto the back wall in order
to focus the camera which was held by tripod, turned out
the light and shot the photograph, using an Olympus E-10
camera with lens partially zoomed in to the area I wanted
to cover (so I am actually standing about 15 feet from the
haze). I used the camera's built in flash and both the camera's
'ASO' setting and exposure setting were set to automatic.
I did not notice anything unusual at the time, other than
the natural chill of a castle dungeon and only saw the 'ghostly
haze' when I got home and looked at the results of my afternoon
photographing the whole of the castle.
Having
taken about three thousand photographs using this camera
over the past year, I know exactly what to expect of it,
so I was aware on seeing the first photograph that I had
captured something unusual, but still needed to prove this
to myself. With this in mind, I returned to the dungeon
yesterday afternoon, (Saturday 1 March 2003) set up in exactly
the same way and took another 49 photographs inside the
dungeon. I also video filmed the the whole return visit,
using infra red light so as not to be visible to the naked
eye. None of the photographs show anything unusual and neither
does the video film. Above you can see two of yesterday's
photographs, the first taken using flash in exactly
the same circumstances as the one showing the haze and the
second taken without flash, using an exposure of 30 seconds
in virtually total darkness other than the tiny amount of
light entering through the tiny entrance behind me. You
can see where the main light is cast, which is really very
little indeed and only actually shows due to the longevity
of the exposure. None of the photographs are enhanced in
any way whatsoever, the only editing being to reduce them
from 2240 x 1680 pixels to 750 x 562 pixels and compress
the data by 40% in order to make Internet loading time possible
for those using dial-up connections. My usual web address
is also added in the bottom right hand corner. I do, of
course still have the originals, not edited in any way at
all, for making prints.
The
only conclusion I can draw is that the misty haze did exist
at the time I took the first photograph and is not an anomaly
of the camera. Also that on thorough inspection of the dungeon
since, there is nothing physical inside which could have
caused it other than perhaps the invisible man smoking a
cigarette. If you have any serious theories yourself as
to its cause, I would be interested to hear
from you.
See
the rest of the castle: [Goodrich
Castle 2003] * [Goodrich
Castle 2004]
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