Help! What's going on here?

[matt hkd]

Hey guys, I took this picture at alcatraz a couple of weeks ago and there's some kind of weird ghosting or CA going on in it, but I can't figure out exactly what's going on. If you look at the top of the wall, there's a gray bar that goes along with it. At first I thought it was the top of the wall, but it's not. It's more apparent in this edit, but you can still see it pretty apparently in the original. Any ideas whats going on?

I shot this with my 18-200mm nikkor. ISO 250, 1/125sec, f/18 at 32mm on my d5100​

DSC_3063 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

[Derrel]

That is an image in the shape of your lens's iris diaphragm; that is called a "ghost". This happens a LOT when shooting toward a bright light source; when the majority of the image field is dark or dark-ish, the ghosting is usually pretty prominent and easy to spot. Some people like this effect; it can,at times, be used to good artistic effect, while in the situations where one wants a clean,crisp, technically perfect image, ghosting is considered a bad thing.

 

[Bossy]

Can you post the SOOC?

 

[matt hkd]

Yeah here's the original. Thanks for the help already. For some reason I can't get the link to embed so I'll just post it here:

original | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

[MLeeK]

Simple lens flare and ghosting. had you hooded the lens to the camera left it wouldn't have happened. The sun is hitting at the perfect angle across the glass of the lens to cause a little flare to hit the diaphragms perfectly to give you a little flare there.
Lens hoods really do serve a purpose and this is it!

 

[c.cloudwalker]

It's the spirit of an old indian chief who died during the takover of the island and whose name was Straight Arrow.

The fact that he shows up in your photo is good for you. He is watching over you.