Grand Central Radiantly Transfigured by the Light Metamorphosis

Photo date: January 13, 2016. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

In two previous posts (here and here) I had photos showing a most astonishing effect in which light seems to rise up from a light source like drifting smoke: an inexplicable effect I call the light metamorphosis. Those photos were taken in front of a TV, but I wondered: could the effect appear in a grander setting? Below are some wondrous examples of this effect occurring in Grand Central Terminal in New York. 

Open the photo up in a separate tab to see it at higher resolution.

Upon first looking at this photo, you might think that it is rather like some photo you have seen before outside of this blog. But let me explain why such an idea is not correct.  There are two types of photos that you might recall when seeing a photo like this. The first type of photo is a photo taken while the camera is moving in a way that causes light to appear as streaks. But when that happens, every element in the photo becomes a blurry streak; and that is not what we see here. Here we see that the architectural elements and the people are not streaks. The only streaks are those coming from light sources in the station.  There is no way to get such a photo by merely moving the camera when you take a photo. In fact, my camera was not moving when any of the photos in this post were taken.

Another type of photo that you might recall when seeing this photo is one of those long-exposure photos that shows little streaks of light at the bottom (caused by people moving about), while the area above the bottom does not look streaked. But this is not such a photo. The streaks do not come from any moving objects, but only from stationary objects: the lights of the station. The photo above had an exposure time of less than a second (.68 second), so it was not a long exposure photo.

Notice the squiggly motion of the light in the photo above.  You could never get that from moving the camera within a single second, because you couldn't make so many changes of direction so quickly.

Below is another photo from the same day.

Now the direction of the wondrous "light drift" has changed. The light now seems to rise up like smoke, but it drifts toward the left. The centrally located circular information desk looks almost as if it is on fire, but it is not.  The EXIF data on this photo shows the exposure time was only 1/30 of a second.

Below is another photo from the same day. The exposure time was less than a second.

Now the preternatural "light drift" has changed direction again -- the light drifts to the right. Notice the very strange part at the end of these light streaks, where the streak does a little "U-turn" thing, changing direction back to the left.

Below is another photo from the same day. The exposure time was less than a second.

Below is another photo from the same day. The exposure time was 1/30 of a second. Notice how in this photo the light seems to fall down, like water dripping down from a fountain.

Below is another photo from the same day. The exposure time was only 1/30 of a second.

Below is another photo from the same day. The exposure time was only 1/30 of a second.

These photos are all entirely authentic unaltered photos that have been uploaded directly from the camera without any modification at all. You can be sure they are authentic, because there is simply no way to fake a photo series like this, and end up with photos like those I have provided here. You cannot create an effect like this by moving your camera, because if you do that everything in the photo will appear streaky and blurry -- but in these photos nothing appears streaky except streaks coming from the existing lights. You cannot create photos like this by using a long exposure, because a long exposure will show lights like those we see here completely normal (since lights here don't move), and will show the crowd looking all streaky. But that's the opposite of what we see here. You also could not fake photos like this using software, because no software has a function or feature that produces this effect.

What we see here is the same paranormal effect involved in the photo below I published earlier. If you zoom in to the photo, you will see that every letter in the phrase "Music Choice" has its own little streak of light rising up from it.

I may note that the camera producing these photos is an old point-and-click Olympus camera. It only produces this strange effect occasionally, taking normal photos most of the time. The effect only can be seen in photos, and I do not see it with my eyes.

Encountering this manifestation, I can only feel the same type of awe shown in that lunar monolith excavation scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the scene where an awe-filled Dr. Heywood Floyd touches the monolith, encountering a manifestation of a power utterly beyond his understanding.

The photos in this post were are all flash photos taken with normal camera settings (no "Night photo" settings).