Orbs in Photographs

We recently gathered to celebrate a milestone birthday in my family as a good reason to update a group family photo. My mom's side of the family gathers photos of the families every year to create one giant birthday calendar (of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins). My mom's family of 10 girls and 2 boys fills out 12 months. I am one of 6 and my parents have 21 grandchildren. We have a large family! It has been several years since my mom has been able to send a photo of all of us together. 

My sister-in-law uploaded the photos from her Nikon DSLR camera to the Google drive photo album for all to access after the party, and I noticed something in the thumbnails of the photos: an orb!

I was watching a Jamie Butler live video last week and she mentioned orbs. She also mentioned a photographer Dan Drasin. I recalled because she joked that it rhymed with raisin. I googled him during the video and read this blog post and then went back to the blog post after I spotted the orbs in our family photos. It was only after reviewing the blog post and seeing the reference to streaking orbs that I noticed the streak above the photos of the grandparents with the grandchildren. See the white streak above the grandchildren photo between the two oldest boys in images 1, 2 & 3?

We'll number Left to Right:  Image 1, Image 2, Image 3

Disclaimer: I am a master of the Photoshop, but I did not manipulate/enhance the images in any way other than to select and blur the group to honor family privacy.

The photos below (image 4 & 5) are of the entire family (although, the one of the left below includes some of my dad's family that popped in the back row but do not appear in the 2nd below once my other sister-in-law returned...we had to do a re-take because she left to get something from home). The grandparents/grandchildren photos (1, 2 & 3) were taken between image 4 and image 5, approximately 15 minutes apart. We were all supposed to "remember your spot" to add my sister-in-law once she arrived. The two teens in the front row on the left obviously didn't remember their spots even though the 3 year old & 4 year old got it right. Ha!

We'll number Left to Right: Image 4, Image 5

The photos of the entire family (image 4 & 5) has an orb hovering just over my brother Mark's head. He is named after his godfather, my mother's brother, who passed a little over a year ago. My intuition immediately registered the orb as my Uncle Mark. I called my dad, "Uncle Mark is in the family photos." He replied, "Duh." I said, "No, not my brother, the other Uncle Mark!"

Dan Drasin says 95% of phenomenon is microscopic dust particles, shows up as an orb.

From Wikipedia: Backscatter commonly occurs in low-light scenes when the camera's flash is used. Cases include nighttime and underwater photography, when a bright light source and reflective unfocused particles are near the camera. Light appears much brighter very near the source due to the inverse-square law, which says light intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source.

The artifact can result from the backscatter or retroreflection of the light from airborne solid particles, such as dust or pollen, or liquid droplets, especially rain or mist. They can also be caused by foreign material within the camera lens.The image artifacts usually appear as either white or semi-transparent circles, though may also occur with whole or partial color spectra, purple fringing or other chromatic aberration. With rain droplets, an image may capture light passing through the droplet creating a small rainbow effect.

The flash was not used in these photos. Images 4 & 5 were taken many minutes apart, yet the orb is present in both. Also, the camera moved around for individual family photos while we waited to take image 5. The camera was set up on a tripod. My apple phone photos similar to image 1-3 not capture the orbs.