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Appearing to be surrounded by a shimmering aura is a more common image in photography than you might imagine. People have assumed this phenomenon to be evidence that a human aura truly exists, but the truth is that this is achieved through simple photographic effects, which have been known of for very many years, the s0-called  aura i produced by an effect referred to as Kirlian photography. 

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Russian inventor Semyon Davidovich Kirlian, after whom it was named, made this strange effect famous in 1939, after he discovered that applying high voltage electric fields, close to photographic plates, effect the odd appearance of eerily radiating light, inexplicably it seems surrounding the object being photographed, and giving it an almost ghostly status.

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Most bafflingly, in spite of this eerie occurence being known to some as bio-electrography, both living beings and non-living objects are equally affected by it, putting the human aura theorists firmly in their place. Allegedly coming across this process accidently, Kirlian had been experimenting with electricity and never actually found any use for it, though records show that, at the start of the 20th century, inventive priest Roberto Landell de Moira also performed photographic experiments of this kind.

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Claiming to have, finally, captured the himan aura on film, this curious cleric caused controversy such that he was obliged to abandon his experimenting. Robert Buelteman could perhaps, in his creation of botanical photography tied to this phenomena, be likened to Frankenstein- style mad science, though reanimating dead tissue plays no part in this modern scenario.