Photographic Poltergeist

As you can see in the above contact sheet, a very strange thing happened while shooting on the Texas City Dike. When we arrived it was very heavy fog which started to burn off as the sun came up. The traffic in the Texas City Channel was just becoming visible when a barge came out.

Wednesday we were looking at Alcy’s photos and the photographs she took of the barge were excessively blue. She had been experimenting with camera settings so I laid it to having accidentally changing the white balance to tungsten. She swore she didn’t but that is what looked like happened. However, in between the shots of the barge she turned to the left and did a couple of photos of a working dredge. The two photos of the dredge seemed to have correct white balance. Yet when she went back to shooting the barge the photos were again blue. That was very strange and didn’t make a lot of sense.

 
Well, last night I downloaded my photos from the Nikon to the computer and this morning I noticed that my photographs of the barge were also excessively blue. They looked just like Alcy’s. I also turned to the left and photographed the dredge and those shots seemed correct white balance. Yet turning back to the barge the photos again looked like they were shot on tungsten. The pattern in my photos were exactly like Alcy’s and I know that I did not accidentally change white balance. Very, Very weird. I have concluded that it has to be a photographic poltergeist.

ADDENDUM: I believe I have discovered the cause of the blue photographs--auto white balance. On the Nikon, auto white balance is very impressive. I have had it correct photographs much better than I have been able to do in post processing, so I frequently use it. In this case we were both on auto and when we pointed the camera in that particular direction the sensor picked up something that caused the white balance to change to tungsten. This is the first time I have ever experienced this so it threw me. I am just pleased to know that it was not an encounter with a poltergeist from 1947.