18/03/2020 - Birmingham – Blue Lights Photograph

Updated: Aug 3, 2020

Birmingham UFO Group Case Report

Author: Dave Hodrien

Release Date: 29/07/2020

Photograph Details

Just after midnight on Saturday 18th March 2020 Fred Paul decided to take some extended exposure photographs from his balcony in central Birmingham. Months later when he checked back through the photos he’d taken that night he noticed an anomaly on one of them. Although he had not seen anything at the time, one of the photographs appeared to show a triangle of bright blue tinged lights surrounded in a oval shaped pale blue glow.

Copy of the photograph, with the lights ringed in red:

Zoomed view of the lights:

Zoomed view with edge find and zoomed view with negative colours:

Photograph Analysis

First of all the photograph is definitely genuine rather than one modified on computer. The witness was able to send me the raw image file off his camera, which is impossible to modify without re-saving to a different image type.

Below is the start of the metadata of this raw image:

From this it can be seen that the photograph was taken on a Canon EOS450D camera at 12:02 am on 18th March 2020 with a 16 second exposure time. Although it is possible for the camera date and time to be set incorrectly, the witness has informed me that this date and time is correct.

After examining the photograph and testimonial evidence I feel that the most probable explanation for the lights is lens flare caused by a bright light source not visible within the frame of the image. There are other lens flares visible elsewhere in the sky on the photograph, as shown below:

I have also examined very similar photographs before which have been caused by lens flare, and this would also explain why the witness did not see anything with his own eyes at the time.

Fred entertained this notion himself in his initial E-Mail to me, however due to the long exposure this meant that it must have been present for 16 seconds without moving. This could imply a fixed stationary light source, however he has tried to recreate the photo under similar lighting conditions, time and location but has not been able to replicate the image. It is of course possible that the light was from a nearby vehicle which was then driven away from the area.

Despite my conclusion regarding this image, I would very much like to thank Fred for sending it my way. Although I feel it is likely lens flare, the idea that it is something far more unusual cannot be completely put out of the picture as there is no clearly determined light source within the frame of the image which can be matched to it.