Question about old Polaroid shots

[Perd Hapley]

I know there's a number of photogs out there, and I have a question for you.  

I was looking at some promotional literature from a Bible college, recently, as said school's dorky quartet had come to sing at my church.  On the cover was a photograph of the school's ground-breaking ceremony, taken in 1966 with a Polaroid camera.  In the center of the photo, some preacher or school official was reading from the Bible.  Above the Bible was a bright white - uh - thing.  Looked like two bolts of lightening coming down on that Bible from on high.  The Bible college folk think of this as a miracle and a sign from God.  While it may well be the latter, I wondered if this sort of anomoly was common to that sort of equipment, or if it might have some other natural explanation.

Thanks,
fistful

[trapperready]

I saw a blurb a while back about "editing" Polaroid photos while they developed by pressing on them with a small blunt object (something like a Palm-Pilot stylus). IIRC, as the image begins to show, you can draw with the stylus, which will then leave marks when the photo is fully developed. There were actually people using this technique to make some pretty cool pictures, essentially by tracing the images in the pictures.

Perhaps it was something like that, done either intentionally or by accident.

[Perd Hapley]

But they didn't have Palm Pilots in 1966.    Thanks, trap.

[trapperready]

Then it truly was a miracle.

BTW, I found a website (www.polaroidarts.com) which has some examples of what I was talking about.

[charby]

I played around with some slow exposure polaroid in the mid 90's (before palm pilots). We would take a picture and use a flat toothpick to trace around things or draw objects. Somewhere in my boxes of crap I have a polaroid of me with a halo over my head.

-C

[K Frame]

Polaroids, especially old ones, are well known for the image layer cracking. I suspect that that's the cause here.

[Azrael256]

A few years ago, I was forced to work with a Polaroid so ancient that it had to be upgraded to use glass plates.  Seriously.  The smoke from the flash really fogged up the place.

Anyway, it had a film cartridge in it that had been unsealed some years before.  By "some years," I mean the first two exposures showed who really killed Kennedy.  Old film in an OOOOOOOld camera.  So, before I changed the cartridge, I decided to use up the last eight exposures.  I took a shot of my hand making a rude gesture, I took a shot of my cigarette lighter, and I turned the whole apparatus on its side (damned thing weighed 70 pounds with its frame) and took a picture of myself.  All of them came out looking like some kind of photographic Picasso.

[Perd Hapley]

Wow, neato.  So this could have been a well-placed anomaly, or the photo could have been touched up?  I'd love to post the picture here, but they don't have it on their website.  

http://pvbi.edu/home/index.php4

A ground-breaking service took place on July 31, 1966, the closing day of that year's camp....General Superintendent, George I. Straub, called on Rev. Truman Wise to read the Scripture. While he read from II Chronicles 6, God placed His visible seal on the school. Rev. Arthur Thomas took a Polaroid picture, for the God's Missionary Standard, of Rev. Wise reading the Scripture. Opening the camera, the photographer seemed to hear a voice saying, "This is the seal of my approval upon the school." When the picture developed, a phenomenal seven-branched flame like forked lightning hovered over the Bible. God had clearly made it known that He was pleased and that His presence would continue with them.

[roo_ster]

Sounds a bit like a protestant version of the catholics who see Mary in every croissant and glass office building.

[Monkeyleg]

The emulsion on Polaroids remains very soft for a long time. Just about anything will scratch it easily, taking it right down to the white paper base. Even a piece of goo on the rollers of the processor will lift pieces of the emulsion off.

Sounds like somebody scratched the surface and, lo and behold, there was a miracle.

[Guest]

Unless there was an actual poloroid picture glued to the front of the program then what you were actually looking at was a photograph of a poloroid photograph, which opens up the options for alteration pretty significantly.

[Perd Hapley]

Well, see yeager, you're just drifting into tinfoil territory there.  Somebody alters the picture forty years ago, and everyone thinks it's a miracle - that's believable.  The school conspires to make up a story about a public event that took place forty years ago, and everyone who was there goes along with it?  Not so much.

There are at least a few dozen people in the photograph.