Rocket-Like Rays Play "Ceiling Tag"

Photo date: February 1, 2016. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

The unaltered photo below was taken in Grand Central Terminal in New York, on a day in which it was unusually crowded. We see the incredibly strange effect I call the light metamorphosis, in which light rays rise way up above their source, often bending in strange ways. Here we see the light rays seeming to rise up like rockets, as if they had some ambition to touch the high, high ceiling.

The photo was a flash photo with an exposure time of 1/30 of a second, using normal camera settings (no "Night picture" setting).