The Use of Kirlian Photography in Sports

The use of Kirlian photography in sports is not about capturing action shots. The camera utilized for Kirlian photography does not have the automatic “sports mode” of digital cameras. The Kirlian camera does not have knobs to change ISO settings or apertures. In fact, the camera for Kirlian photography is just a simple camera that uses Polaroid film. It is relatively bulky when compared to the common digital camera. But it has sensors that supposedly register the energy field of the subject.

If you were an athlete, wouldn’t you like to know exactly what would be photographed by the Kirlian technique? The athlete’s energy field is supposedly the main focus of Kirlian photography used in sports. The athlete’s aura is being photographed to determine the athlete’s state of mind, metabolic processes, and spiritual strength. In short, the photographed aura of the athlete will display the fitness of the athlete to join the competition. Avid supporters of Kirlian photography believe that the photographed aura of athletes will reveal conditions that modern medical equipment could not find.

Semyon Kirlian introduced the technique of Kirlian photography and many people who believe in the paranormal and the supernatural picked up the allure of the photography technique. But, apparently, there are also many well-respected researchers that claim to support the idea that a person’s aura represents the person’s state of health. For example, there was Thelma Moss who insisted that Kirlian photography could be used to diagnose the illnesses suffered by the body. Of course, the fact that she experimented with the hallucinating drug called LSD (that’s lysergic acid diethylamide) and that she underwent therapy for various psychological problems didn’t lessen her credibility as a researcher of the paranormal. She has, after all, a Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA.

There was also Victon Adamenko, a biophysicist who explained that the aura or energy field photographed through the Kirlian technique is actually a group of electrons discharged by the body. The work of researchers such as Moss and Adamenko convinced enough authorities in the now-defunct USSR to utilize Kirlian photography in examining the fitness of the country’s athletes. Today, many Russians still believe the effectiveness of Kirlian photography in capturing the aura of an athlete. Russian physicists, led by Dr. Konstantin Korotkov of St. Petersburg State Technical University, attempted to scientifically capture the aura and create a Kirlian-like image using a laboratory process called GDV or Gas Discharge Visualization. How far this process will go to become accepted by the rest of the scientific community remains to be seen.