The Water Face Effect: A Startling Result When Photographing Water Drops

What I call “the water face effect” is an astonishing effect I first noticed when taking flash photos of water drops in October, 2014. I have most commonly seen the effect when photographing (at a distance of 5 inches) a thin trickle of water pouring down about 7 inches from a water bottle into some container suitable for collecting water drops (with a black backdrop placed behind this trickle of water drops). The effect typically has the following general characteristics:

1. A number of bright circles or orbs appear within the water drops that are being photographed, typically between 1 and 10 per water drop. If the drops are smaller, I might see only one or two orbs per drop; but in a large water drop I might see as many as ten orbs.
2. Most of these orbs are exactly circular, and most are the same size, often about one tenth the size of a water drop.
3. Most of the orbs are mainly a single color, typically white or blue, but frequently other colors such as yellow, orange, green, red or purple. Less frequently I see orbs that are a combination of colors, such as yellowish green.
4. When water drops are photographed from a distance of about 5 inches using an Olympus FE-100 camera, a large fraction of the orbs within the water drops appear to have details that resemble faces, faces that typically include what looks like mouths or smiles and one or more eyes.
5. In the very large number of cases in which one of these orbs appears to have a face with a mouth, the mouth appears to be smiling most of the time. Very rarely or never do I see an orb with what looks like a frowning mouth.
6. In the very large number of cases in which one of these orbs appears to have a mouth, the mouth often appears to be open in a way that reveals what looks like teeth inside the mouth (often with what looks like spaces between the teeth).
7. In the very large number of cases in which one of these orbs appears to have an eye, one can often see what looks like a dark and light part of the eye rather than a single dark speck.
8. In the very large number of cases in which one of these orbs appears to have a face, there rarely or never appears to be anything like a neck, scalp hair, or ears.
9. In a small but significant fraction of the water drop photos (perhaps 3% or more), my water drop photos show what looks like orbs moving at high speeds around the outer edges of the water drop, rather like test tubes spinning around in a medical lab's centrifuge. I have named this sub-effect “the orb centrifuge effect.” When such an effect is seen, you often seem to see motion blur, and the photographic effect that photographers call ghosting, produced when an object moves faster than the shutter speed of a camera.
10. Very many or most of the circular orbs have a bright outer ring about ten percent as thick as the total width of the circle. This outer ring is typically featureless, and brighter than the area inside it.
11. The orbs within water drops often are surrounded by what look like wispy auras, rather like solar prominences that surround the sun.
12. After the effect is produced, there seems to be no change in the water accumulated from the drip of the water drops that are photographed. One is left with what looks like ordinary pure water. While an energy phenomenon may be going on, it does not seem that any permanent material phenomenon is occurring.

Example of the water face effect, from 12/16/14

During the past four months I have been getting the "water face effect" described above every time that I take water drop photos using a particular protocol I will describe in another post, as long as I use my Olympus FE-100 camera. If I stick with the protocol, the effect seems to occur with great consistency. If I play around with the protocol (such as varying the camera settings or varying the distance between the camera and the water drops or using a different camera), I may stop seeing the effect clearly (although I usually still see traces of the effect, like someone seeing faces at a distance). But when I return to the same "tried and true" protocol that succeeded before, I get the effect with great consistency.

I have seen this "water face effect" occur on dozens of different days during the past four months, but I cannot say I would be surprised if it stops occurring at any time in the future. As they say in the securities industry, "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

The strange output when I photograph water drops is remarkably consistent. I don't see in my water drop photos anything that resembles animals or plants or manufactured objects. What I get in my water drop photos is basically an endless series of faces -- faces, faces, and more faces. There is little variety in the expressions that seem to exist on the faces, with almost all of them seeming to have smiles. This remarkably cheerful effect gets a little monotonous, and I sometimes wish there was more variety; but there isn't. There are other types of anomalous photos I take that have a huge amount of variety, but they do not involve water drops.

By now I have hundreds of good, clear photos showing this “water face effect,” and more than 70 of these show the “orb centrifuge effect.” These photos will gradually be released on this site in the next few months, although I will mainly be presenting other types of startling photos. Quite a few have already been released, and can be found by looking at my posts with the label of “water face effect,”
37 of which can be found here.

I get this “water face effect” to appear in a somewhat different way when I take photos of water drops on my window while it is raining. When I do that, my photos show only one orb in each drop of water, with a typical orb appearing to show a little face. Examples will be provided later on this blog. 

Keep in mind that while these assertions may strain credulity, they are backed up by more than 200 photos on this site, the photos I have labeled "water face effect."

Postscript (June 21, 2015): This post (except for the sentence above) was originally written on February 9, 2015.  During the past 4 months (between February and June 2015) I have continued to observe this phenomenon about 4 days a week, exactly as described above.  I find these "orb faces" abundantly in my photos of water drops, each time I sit down to photograph falling water drops using  my Olympus FE-100 camera.
Post-postscript (December 24, 2015): The phenomenon reported here has continued throughout 2015, with no change in frequency. I have continued to observe this phenomenon about 4 days a week, exactly as described above.