Can you see me waving?
Shadows are a Sign of Impurities in the Water.
From my book, How to Read Water:
“You will never see your own shadow in pure water, because there is nothing for the light to bounce back off. You might see your shadow on the bottom of a pond, pool or stream, but you cannot see shadows in pure water itself. However, when water has particles in it, it becomes cloudy or ‘turbid’ and then light can bounce off these particles, which makes it possible for us to see both the light shining into the water and shadows, too.
If it helps, think of a torch beam in a dark room, you can see the wall the beam lands on, but you cannot see the beam itself, unless there is a lot of dust in the air and then the beam is easy to see. So, if you see your shadow in the water, it is proof that it is not pure and has lots of particles in it.
If you are gazing down into cloudy water looking at your own shadow, there are a couple of extra effects worth keeping an eye out for.
The first is that your shadow may have an orange-hued fringe around it. This happens because the tiny particles in the water don’t reflect all wavelengths (and therefore colours) back equally to you. Orange makes it back more easily than the others.
The second effect, which, if you see the orange ‘halo’ effect, is definitely worth looking for, is that you may spot shafts of sunlight emerging from your shadow and radiating out away from it underwater. This effect is sometimes nicknamed the ‘aureole effect’. These radiating rays are not caused by any holy behaviour on the viewer’s part, but are the optical effect of looking in the opposite direction to the sun, which is what we are always doing when we look at our own shadow.”
You might also enjoy:
How to Read Water – The Book
The video was taken from a bridge over the river Arun, in Arundel, West Sussex.