I got a new camera in the summer of 2005. Soon after making the purchase, I began to see that in all vertical photos where I used the flash, a black shadow would appear in the lower right corner or the photos. This stupid shadow ruined God knows how many pictures in this manner. Here are four examples of this on this particular shoot: (picture 1, picture 2, picture 3, picture 4). Since first noticing the shadow, I've taken the camera to repair shops galore and no one has been able to offer me any kind of explanation for the unusual shadow. Shooting Fernando Meirelles in his hotel room in the Four Seasons in Chicago, this shadow ultimately ended up ruining about 20 pictures. • Pouring over the pictures some hours later, I got down and was determined to figure out just what the hell was causing this shadow. I recreated my photo shooting style in front of several friends who were curiously investigating every little move. Nobody could see anything wrong. Several of my friends even tried shooting vertical photos with a flash to see if they could duplicate the shadow. They couldn't. Finally, one of my friends said, "It's almost like something is getting in the way of the flash bulb." Everyone else scoffed at him, until someone remembered that, in the fall of 1998, I dislocated my left pinky finger playing basketball and that post dislocation, the straightest i can get this finger is a 90 degree angle. Sure enough, while focusing, my once dislocated pinky blocks the lower right portion of the flash bulb, causing a giant shadow to be cast across the subject. Problem solved. I still find the bizarre nature of this situation really funny.
