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The above photo was taken by either me or my mom in January 1990. It's been long, but I think the photo was taken in Battery Park in Manhattan. The gentleman in the picture is a family member.
Although the photo looks somewhat supernatural there is a simple explanation.
The photo was taken using a cheap pocket-size compact camera and is overexposed. It's a coincidence that there aren't other large areas in the centre of the picture where overexposure would be so clearly visible. Other buildings in the front are also light-coloured, but there is enough detail (much more still in the actual photo) - large windows, shadows cast by rooftops - that at first glance the viewer doesn't perhaps focus on this. The effect is somewhat lost in the scanned picture, however. Also, the photo was taken so far from the WTC that there isn't much detail to those buildings, and due to the overexposure different shades of colour are lost. If you pay attention to the gentleman's white shirt, you will see that it is clearly too white, but again this is a very small area in the picture and you may not see it immediately.
Finally, part of the problem is the photo paper or a fault in the development process, because the photo did not always look like this. The film was probably developed by a cheap one-hour service.
It has taken many years for the white "blooming" effect to become this visible. Eventually, I expect the entire photo to fade away quicker than it should. I think at this stage it is quite stunning and eerie though - as if only the WTC is fading from the picture.
I haven't altered the photo in any way except to increase brightness (but not contrast) just a bit - my scanner tends to present pictures darker than they are. The scanned picture is as close to the original as I can make it although I can't get it quite right - the original photo is not in perfect shape anymore. The vertical line in the right is due to a small crease and is more pronounced in the scanned picture as is the white vapor trail of a jet plane that has started to dissolve. In addition, in the photo I'm holding in my hand next to the monitor, the side of the WTC building that is facing the camera (where there is a grey horizontal bar on top) is just a slight bit darker hue than the other side of the building.
Due to a dead video card I had to swap recently I wiped the hard drive clean. I haven't installed Photoshop yet, and all I had to work with this picture is Microsoft Photo Editor that comes with Office. The JPEG compression is horrendous and you can clearly see rough sawtooth-like edges. (Unfortunately the free image hosting service on the Web will resize large files automatically so there is no point in uploading a high-resolution file.)
