How to check a strange photograph
Part of the PRN Evidence Library
Before you start
This guide walks you through a simple, step-by-step check of a photograph showing something you cannot immediately explain. The core principle: almost every photographic anomaly has an ordinary cause, and finding that cause — or ruling it out carefully — is the only honest way to assess what you recorded.
Read the metadata
Every digital photo contains hidden data called EXIF information. This records the exact date and time the photo was taken, which device captured it, the camera settings used (ISO, shutter speed, aperture), whether the flash fired, and sometimes GPS coordinates.
Checking this first tells you when and where the image was actually taken — which sometimes immediately explains the anomaly.
On iPhone: open the photo in the Photos app and swipe up. The info panel shows date, time, camera model, and location.
On Android: open the photo, tap the three-dot menu, and select Details or Info.
On a computer: right-click any JPEG file and choose Properties (Windows) or Get Info (Mac), then look at the Details tab.
For the full picture: upload the image to Jeffrey's Exif Viewer at exif.regex.info — it shows every EXIF field the camera recorded, including ISO and shutter speed.
Look especially at the ISO value. A high ISO (above 800) means the camera was struggling with low light and will produce digital noise — random pixel clusters that can look like shapes or figures when you zoom in.
Check the lighting conditions
Look at the flash setting in the EXIF data. If the flash fired, dust or insects very close to the lens will appear as bright, circular shapes — this is the most common cause of "orb" images.
These particles are within the camera's minimum focus distance, so the lens cannot sharpen them. They appear as soft, glowing circles. The closer the particle is to the lens, the larger the circle appears. Night-vision and infrared cameras are especially prone to this because infrared light reflects off particles far more strongly than visible light does.
If the flash did not fire, note how dark the scene was. Dark conditions push the camera to use higher ISO and longer exposures, both of which introduce image quality problems that can create false shapes.
Look for bright light sources in the frame
Scan the full image — not just the anomaly — for bright light sources. Sun, streetlights, windows, phone torches, and car headlights can all cause lens flare.
Lens flare appears as streaks, hexagonal shapes, or circular halos. The reliable sign: the anomaly sits on a straight line between a bright light source and the centre of the frame. If that line exists, you are almost certainly looking at flare.
Also check for reflective surfaces — glass, mirrors, polished floors, windows. These can produce reflections that look like figures or shapes when photographed at an angle.
Zoom in and examine the anomaly itself
Zoom into the anomaly as far as your device allows. Look for two specific things.
First: is the anomaly made up of blocky, pixelated patches? JPEG compression divides images into 8x8 pixel blocks. In dark, high-ISO, or heavily compressed images, these blocks create halos, smearing, and shapes that were not present in the original scene. If the anomaly has hard-edged blocks or a grid-like texture, this is likely the cause.
Second: is the anomaly blurred in a way that is consistent with the rest of the image? Motion blur (caused by camera shake or a subject moving) spreads light across the frame in streaks. If the anomaly is blurry in the same direction and amount as other objects in the shot, it is part of the same motion blur.
Compare against the ordinary causes list below
Work through the list before drawing any conclusions. Most photographic anomalies match one or more of these causes completely.
Check for other photos from the same moment
If the photo was taken on a phone, check whether there are other images from the same burst or the seconds immediately before and after. Does the anomaly appear in more than one frame? Does it move consistently with a physical object like dust or an insect? Does it appear only when the flash fired?
Multiple frames from the same moment are one of the most useful checks available. An anomaly that appears once, in a single frame, with the flash firing, is overwhelmingly likely to be a particle near the lens.
Common ordinary causes
- Dust, pollen, or water droplets near the lens — soft, circular shapes, especially with flash or IR illumination
- Insects close to the lens — can appear as orbs, streaks, or irregular shapes
- Lens flare — streaks, hexagons, or halos aligned with a bright light source
- Pareidolia — the brain's automatic pattern recognition imposes faces and figures on random pixel clusters in dark or blurry areas; this is a well-documented feature of human perception, not evidence of anything in the scene
- JPEG compression artefacts — blocky or smeared shapes in dark or heavily compressed images
- Reflections — from glass, windows, mirrors, or polished surfaces
- Camera motion or subject motion — blur that creates streaks or ghost shapes
- High ISO digital noise — random pixel clusters in low-light shots that can resemble shapes when zoomed in
- IR/night-vision blowout — bright, undefined areas or halos around heat sources or particles near the lens
Free tools to use
Jeffrey's Exif Viewer (exif.regex.info) — upload or paste a photo to see the full set of EXIF data, including camera settings, date/time, and GPS coordinates if recorded. No account needed.
Google Photos (photos.google.com, free) — tap the i button on any photo for basic EXIF data including date, time, and device.
ExifTool (exiftool.org, free) — a command-line tool for complete metadata extraction on Windows, Mac, or Linux; the most thorough option available.
When something might be worth a closer look
After working through these steps, most photographs will have a clear ordinary explanation.
Occasionally, something genuinely remains unexplained: the metadata confirms the flash was off, there are no light sources in frame, the image quality rules out compression artefacts, and no reflective surfaces were present — yet there is still something in the image that cannot be accounted for.
In those cases, the honest position is not that you have evidence of something paranormal. It is that you have a photograph with an anomaly that has not yet been explained. That is a meaningful distinction, and it is worth documenting carefully.