The photo I captured the UFO in that I took in August of 2006 is here, the photo I captured a similar UFO in this March of 2007 is here.

These are in the March 2006 archives but I’ve added links here because people keep asking.

If you have seen or photographed objects like I did last August or at the end of March (see the March archive of this blog for photos), please contact me.

There is one person up on Surrey BC Canada who is seeing and photographing a similar object north of Surrey. There are some interesting aspects of these objects. During the day they come very close to matching the brightness and color of the sky so they are not noticeable to the naked eye or un-processed photograph.

However, contrast enhancement brings them out and makes them visible. They can be seen on unprocessed photographs or with the naked eye if you know where to look and what to look for but they are just barely visible.

They apparently give off heat as they are highly visible using infrared sensitive equipment at night, at least in the case of the object north of Surrey.

The fuzzy appearance, like they aren’t entirely in focus, is part of their nature. You can see in both photos that I took objects with smaller pixel counts that are focused, and you can see in the picture I took yesterday, which there wasn’t a UFO, there was an airplane in the same general location and it was in focus.

Further, the person in British Columbia trained a telescope on one and it will not come into focus on the telescope either.

So what we know about these objects so far, they’re stealthy in the visible spectrum, they give of infared, radiating heat, which makes them highly visible to IR sensitive cameras at night.

They appear defocused, both in visible light and infrared, and this is a property of them, not merely equipment out of focus.

They have been visible from Shoreline and Edmonds Washington to the north, and from Surrey BC to the north. If it were one object that hadn’t moved, it would have to be very high and very huge. It does appear to come and go though so it might be more than one object that visits both areas or it might be more than one similar object.

It is the last possibility that concerns me the most. If there is one near here, one a hundred miles to the north, is there only the two or are there thousands or even tens of thousands of these floating around in the sky worldwide, and if so to what end.

For this reason I’d really like to hear from others outside of the immediate area. Try photographing clear skies, use the lowest ASA setting and highest resolution on your camera, manually focus at infinity because with no subject in the field your camera may be out of focus otherwise, take pictures. Then take a program like PaintShop Pro and use the “Clarify” function, or else manually enhance the contrast, then look for “orb” like objects in the sky.

If you see anything let us know!

I stopped by Richmond Beach to see if I could photograph the same spherical shaped UFO. Between the fact that I’ve photographed what appears to be the same 0bject twice in a similar location and a guy up in Surrey BC is photographing another similar object regularly, I thought perhaps this one would be there regularly as well.

It may have been though depending upon it’s altitude, clouds may have obscured it as there was a fairly thick low cloud cover.

I’ve added links to the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, The Temporal Doorway’s UFO Section, and to Project Blue Book Archives, all sites I ran across while searching for UFO photos in this area.

I added a link to ECETI which stands for Enlightened Contact With ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence. You can judge for yourself how enlightened it is, but it does have a good UFO photo section which includes some objects similar to what I and the person with NewBranes up in Surrey have photographed.

I apologize for referring to them as just “The Person” but their profile is hidden so I don’t know their name from the comments. Anyway, check it out.

The French government has decided to release information they have on UFO incidents in France. I’ve added a link to their site, Site du GEIPAN, on the side bar. As one might expect, the site is in French, although they state that they will make an English version available in the future.

Using a translator on the web will not be of much use as the majority of the documents are scanned images in PDF format. Since the translators will not work on images the majority of the text will remain in French even with the aid of a machine translation.

When they initially brought the site up, the traffic was so heavy that it crashed almost immediately. Consequently, there is little in the way of photographs and only a small amount of text documents presently on the site, but they do say they’re working on it and will release 100% of the information, excepting that they will maintain the privacy and identities of the individuals reporting the incidents.

They divide the incident up into four categories, A) UFOs which are definitely identified, no longer UFOs, B) UFOs which are probably identified, C) UFOs which are unidentified because there isn’t enough information, and D) which are UFOs which remain unidentified in spite of good information. The last category actually comprises about 25% of the incidents.

I have added a link to NewBranes.com on the side bar. The photograph on the right is a photograph from their site of an object that is similar in appearance to the one I photographed except that this object is visible in the infrared at night.

Take a look, particularly at the ufo photos section. They appear to be photographing an object that is very similar in appearance to the one that I have photographed.

This object is particularly visible in the infrared at night. I don’t know if this is the same object or not. The object I photographed last August from Edmonds was four times larger in apparent diameter than the object I photographed in late March from Richmond Beach. Edmonds is only 4-5 miles north of Richmond Beach so if it was the same object then it couldn’t have been too far north of Edmonds unless it moved.

The object to the right was photographed from Surrey, BC, Canada, about 100 miles or so north of Edmonds. If it is the same object then it is quite high in the sky as it appears fairly high up in the sky from Edmonds and Richmond Beach.

This has been photographed repeatedly by the folks up in Surrey, it seems to be there quite frequently but not always.

This got me thinking, more data might help clarify the situation more so here are some tips that might help you capture a UFO in a photograph.

If you have a decent digital camera, try this and maybe we can get some more UFO photos, maybe some closer that will provide more detail.

The two I have captured now were both apparently quite distant so good camera optics and a long lens is helpful. With a long lens a downside is that each photo covers less of the sky but take a lot and then review them.

Go out when it’s clear and there are expanses of clear sky, or even when it’s uniformly cloudy. Take pictures of the sky all around with your camera set to the lowest ASA setting (minimal noise). You may have to manually focus to infinity because a uniform background gives the camera nothing to work with.

Now, take these photographs, and if you don’t see anything visually obvious in them already, load them into PaintShop Pro and use the “Clarify” function with a strength of 20 (maximum).

The Clarify function enhances contrast of uniform brightness areas, brings dark areas brighter, and generally helps bring out very low contrast detail.

If you don’t see anything still you can try running Clarify one more time if the background is still relatively uniform. It will result in a highly unnatural shaded image but it may make detail stand out that you might otherwise pass over.

If you find something in the processed image, then go back and see if you can find it in the original. It also helps to zoom on the image and pan.

Take multiple pictures of each area separated by some small time. While digital artifacts from the camera itself will generally be one pixel, jpeg artifacts can be bigger, multiple pictures of the same object will not only eliminate that possibility but also show movement if there is any background reference at all.

If you have raw capability, shoot in raw mode. Else use the highest quality jpeg setting possible.

Another tip, it’s a good idea to get background references so you can get some idea of how high, distant, and large the object might be.

Now, maybe just wild coincidence, but I find it highly coincidental that both objects, taken seven months apart, were almost in the exact same location and had the same visual appearance. Perhaps wild coincidence but perhaps whatever it is is a regular visitor or permanent resident of the area. I’ll test the theory by continuing to photograph that area.

If you would like to and are in the Puget Sound, this is looking North from Edmonds or Richmond Beach. It is considerably closer in the picture taken from Edmonds but it appeared to be quite a distant north of Edmonds. I don’t know what might be interesting to alien visitors farther north or if this is not something terrestrial in nature, weather balloons, some secret military technology being flown out of Whidbey Island naval airbase, or the air force airbase in Everett.

So more photos people! Get out there with your digital cameras and use them!

I’d like to mention a few things about the UFO photographs I recently posted.

After considering the first photo, before having taken the second, I thought we were just pulling out of the dock, maybe the engines churned up enough froth to actually hurl a drop of water that high (we’re talking 30 or 40 feet above the water level).

That, I thought, would explain the blurred appearance, if it were relatively close and I were focused on infinity. The part of the dock on the photo wasn’t blurred so that didn’t make total sense.

So yesterday on the way back from the bank I stopped at Richmond Beach and took some photos, and I get back and I’m processing those, and what do I see?

Another object that looks identical to the first except it is farther away and the sun is at a different angle. This would have placed the object in almost the same location as it was last August (Edmonds being farther north of Richmond Beach).

So now I thought of things like, could it be a plane or bird far enough away that it just wasn’t sharp enough to discern?

This image was about six pixels wide but the previous image was more than double that. And yet, there are other objects that are visible that are only 1-2 pixels wide in the same photo, so the lens had sufficient resolving power to resolve something cleanly onto the sensor. The fuzzy appearance of the object appears to be a property largely of the object itself.

I also took some pictures of airplanes and helicopters and birds at the resolution limit of the camera and you can make out what they are down to the point where structure, wings, etc, are only one pixel wide and become unrecognizable or disappear.

With really high contrast items, like some of the things around the house and tree parts, near the limit of resolution chromatic aberration becomes an issue (but you don’t see it much in those images because I cleaned it up with Paintshop Pro) but not with low contrast subjects.

So I use the term UFO in the most literal sense, I don’t know what these objects are but I know reasonably well what they are not, not a plane, bird, helicopter, or a common form of balloon, (though I can’t rule out some less common form, mylar weather balloon or something along those lines).

Whatever these things are they either match the color and brightness of the sky very closely, intentionally stealthy, or they are translucent or semi-transparent allowing the sky to be seen through them. If they were merely highly reflective their undersides would be dark reflecting the water beneath them but this is not the case.