The Camera That Prints Your Energy on Film

No screens. No downloads. No Filters.

No digital file that gets buried in your camera roll.

A instant print, your face, your colors, your energy... developed right in front of you. That's the AuraCamera.

Here's exactly how it works.

Where it started:

Kirlian, 1939

It began by accident.

Soviet electrician Semyon Kirlian was repairing equipment at a hospital in Krasnodar when he noticed something: a small flash of light between a high-frequency electrotherapy machine and a patient's skin. He wanted to photograph it.

While experimenting at home, Kirlian placed objects directly onto photographic plates connected to a high-voltage electrical source and discovered that the electrical discharge surrounding the object would expose the film without a lens or camera. The result was a glowing, colorful corona around whatever was being photographed: leaves, hands, fingertips. He called it a visualization of vital energy. Scientists called it coronal discharge photography. The Kirlians published their findings in 1958. By the 1970s, the technique had traveled from Soviet research labs into the hands of artists, healers, and one California electrical engineer named Guy Coggins. (Kirlian, S.D. & Kirlian, V.K., 1961. "Photography and Visual Observations by Means of High-Frequency Currents." Journal of Scientific and Applied Photography)

Guy Coggins and the AuraCam

Coggins took the core principle of Kirlian photography, that the body's electrical activity could be captured on film, and rebuilt it into something entirely different: a portable, accessible system that could photograph a person's full aura portrait, not just their fingertips.

He released the AuraCam 3000 in the early 1980s, followed by the AuraCam 6000, which remains the standard today. The key innovation was pairing an instant-film camera with biofeedback hand sensors and a proprietary algorithm that translated electrical data into a full spectrum of color, a color language developed by Coggins alongside a team of clairvoyants and energy practitioners. (Artsy, "The Colorful and Clairvoyant History of Aura Photography," 2019)

How the AuraCam actually works

The sensors

You place both hands onto two metal sensor plates... one on each side. The sensors begin gathering biofeedback data: electrodermal activity (the electrical conductivity of your skin), temperature, humidity, and static electricity readings from dozens of points across your palms and fingertips.

These measurement points correspond to acupuncture meridians, the same energy pathways that traditional Chinese medicine has mapped for thousands of years as channels through which the body's vital force flows. The data is collected over approximately 15 to 30 seconds.

Electrodermal activity is a well-established physiological signal. Your skin's electrical conductivity shifts in real time based on your autonomic nervous system, the part of you that regulates stress, calm, arousal, and emotional state without conscious control. It's the same signal used in clinical biofeedback therapy and, yes, lie detectors. (Boucsein, W., Electrodermal Activity, Springer, 2012)

The double exposure

The AuraCam 6000 uses a 10-second double shutter on instant film. The first exposure captures a clean portrait — your face, shoulders, head. The second exposure is where the aura appears.

The sensor data is run through Coggins's patented algorithm, which maps specific frequency ranges in your bioelectrical readings to corresponding colors in the aura spectrum. Those colors are then projected as a radiant field around your portrait — directly onto the same piece of instant film — in the second exposure.

The two images fuse on the film as it develops. (NOW Magazine, "Taking a Shot at Aura Photography," 2020)

The print

Within seconds, your photo develops in your hands. The colors that appear around your head and body are the visual output of your biofeedback data, translated through the aura color system. No two prints are identical. Your reading is specific to your body, your state, and that exact moment.

What it is and what it isn't

The AuraCam 6000 measures real physiological signals. Skin conductance, temperature, and electromagnetic activity are legitimate, documented biomarkers that shift based on your physical and emotional state. That part is not up for debate.

What the algorithm does with those signals — mapping them to aura colors, assigning meaning to specific frequencies — is where tradition and technology meet. The color language is not a clinical diagnostic. It's a framework built from decades of aura practice, energy research, and the accumulated knowledge of practitioners who have worked with this technology since the 1980s.

As Wikipedia notes of Kirlian photography, the technique records real electrical phenomena. The interpretation of what those phenomena mean is where science and metaphysics part ways — and where your own experience gets to speak. (Wikipedia, "Kirlian Photography," updated 2025)

The print you walk away with is real. The energy that created it is yours.

Want to know what your colors mean? Read our guide to reading your aura portrait. →

Sources

• Kirlian, S.D. & Kirlian, V.K. (1961). "Photography and Visual Observations by Means of High-Frequency Currents." Journal of Scientific and Applied Photography, Vol. 6.

• Boucsein, W. (2012). Electrodermal Activity. Springer Science & Business Media.

• Wikipedia. "Kirlian Photography." Last updated 2025. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian_photography

• Artsy Editorial. "The Colorful and Clairvoyant History of Aura Photography." 2019. artsy.net

• NOW Magazine. "Taking a Shot at Aura Photography." 2020. nowtoronto.com

• NPR Picture Show. "A Camera That Sees Your True Colors?" 2012. npr.org

• AuraCam / Progen Company. Official product documentation. auracamera.com