A most unusual contraption appears to be hovering over a frozen pond in this black and white picture from Doetinchem, the Netherlands. The object looks a bit like a giant eye. The skaters on the pond seem unaware of it. Actually, even the photographer never noticed it. The reason is simple: the "object" was never there. It is a ruptured "blister" embedded in the gelatine emulsion of the film. The horizontal extension of the shape suggests that a partly dried up substance attached itself to the emulsion layer and got flattened when the film was spooled onto the film roll before it was inserted into the camera. The negative itself shows no deformations in the surface structure of the gelatine emulsion, and no similar film defects were detected in the frames that preceded and followed the shot.

For the sake of completeness we add that the photo was taken at around 12:30 p.m. on January 6, 1985. See next picture for an enlargement.

[Photo by W. VAN ARK - thanks to Frits VAN DER VELDT for submitting us this picture]