I want to believe!

By Barrie Mills on Jun 2, 09 10:05 PM

If it wasn't for my washing line, I wouldn't now be slightly famous in Vietnam.

Let me explain .... the above picture made page 3 of the Echo, the front page of Merseymart, somewhere or other in the Daily Telegraph (whatever that is) and any amount of websites from here to Portugal, India and ... you guessed ... Vietnam.

The more discerning of you will have grasped immediately that this is an excellent picture of a UFO, proving their existence once for all.
Unless it's a Chinese lantern, of course, in which case I'm afraid it still looks like we're very much alone Out There.

UFO, lantern or just a weird light in the sky, it's a good example of how a technically awful picture can actually turn out to be a good news picture.

Here's the facts - it was late on a Sunday night, I'd been to a barbecue and a drink or two may have been taken, I have to admit. I saw the light out of the window and thought it was the police helicopter with a new searchlight.

I had my (t)rusty Nikon D2H near to hand (it's not much use as a camera since the D3 came out but I'd been using it to knock some nails into the wall) and went out in the garden with it to see if it was worth a picture,

The light was definitely not the helicopter and, as it was moving very slowly, I ruled out one of the planets.
It was a large, round orange light and didn't look like any other kind of aircraft I could think of either.

I realised it was going to need a long exposure to get anything at all.
But a long exposure leaves you at the mercy of camera shake, especially if you've had a glass of shandy.

A photographer who was in any way prepared would have whipped out his tripod, so to speak. But I'm more ingenious than that.

Quicker than you can say 'The Truth Is Out There' I stepped up to the washing line and rested the camera on it, like a sling. I took two pics (1.1sec at f2.8, if you're interested - it would have been better to expose for longer on a smaller aperture but I wasn't convinced my washing line was up to professional standard), one of which you can see here.

There's still some motion blur, but at least you can see it's a single point of light, and not a star or meteor.

As I said, it's an awful picture. And it probably was just one of those big Chinese lanterns .

But when I got to work the next day, there had been sightings across Merseyside and we decided to use my pic with the story. The next day it was all across the web, especially on UFO spotters' sites .

The lesson? Well, keep an open mind, don't apologise for those pictures of Gillian Anderson on your computer, and always remember that the quality of a picture scarcely matters at all if the subject is interesting enough.

Nanu-nanu!