Oregon Ducks Football X-Files: Headless Heisman Photographed Over Autzen Stadium

Okay, this is weird.  Last night, I went to Oregon's final home game, where the Ducks sealed a BCS Bowl game berth and at least part of the Pac-10 championship in a 48-29 victory over the Arizona Wildcats.

As usual, I took about 2,000 photos that I'll use in an upcoming Bleacher Report.  I made the trip home to Portland, and again, as usual got caught up editing a huge batch of photos of the Ducks and their fans being awesome.

It was then that I noticed the craziest thing in one of my final series of shots.  

After the game, on out way back to the car, there was a barrage of fireworks over Eugene's Autzen Stadium, home of the Ducks, in celebration of the final home game and of the Ducks securing a spot in, at the very least, the Rose Bowl (that felt good to type).

Everyone cheered, hollered and continued on to their cars in a big rush to get to the I-5 traffic jam.  I shot some parting photos and continued on to do the same.

I got home and edited some shots and was just about to quit for the night when I took my favorite shot of Autzen and made it the desktop image on my MacBook Pro.  

I took a step back from my desk, all proud of myself for being such a talented photographer, when all of a sudden the Twilight Zone theme started playing in my head. 

I stared for a moment, then it turned into the music from the shower scene in Psycho. 

To me it was unmistakable; the smoke from the fireworks had formed an uncanny likeness of the Heisman Trophy in the skies over Autzen Stadium, sans the head!

Check this out, do you see it?

Now, before you say that it's Photoshopped, I can tell you right now that it is.

 I process some of the photos I shoot in HDR, or High Dynamic Range.  This is a simple technique that involves taking three photos of the same thing, one perfectly exposed, one too dark, and one too bright, then layering them together to make them look super-detailed and really cool.

There is, however, no funny business going on with the smoke.

To prove it, here's the three original images.

One properly exposed:

One overexposed by three stops:

And one underexposed by three stops:

There's no trickeration going on, just an evenly exposed image where the shadows are as predominant as the highlights.

To get a refresher on the shape of the statue, here's the actual Heisman Trophy superimposed over the firework smoke for comparison:

And here's mine:

What does it all mean?!?!?

Keep your head in the game if you want to win the award?

Lose your head, lose the day? (I'm looking at you, Mike Stoops.)

Who knows.  Probably just firework smoke caught at the right time.  Kind of like when I was a little boy and I used to stare at the sky and sometimes the clouds would start to look like Oregon Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Fouts.

On an unrelated note, when we stopped at a gas station on the way home, I bought a bag of Doritos and one of them had the Virgin Mary on it.  Unfortunately, my camera had just run out of batteries.

Go Ducks, F-Boise :)

If you'd like to see the rest of my photos from the Arizona game, they're here.

Need to get pumped for the Civil War?  Check these videos out.