Lens Flare
Sometimes when taking photos you’ll get a sun streak or an unwanted streak from lights; this is what is called lens flare. It is an unwanted artifact on your photo. Lens flare is caused by light entering the camera sensors that are not part of the image. Lens flare can cause a reduction in the contrast of your photo or it may also cause over overexposure.
When taking your photo you can reduce lens flare by using a lens hood. You can also edit the lens flare in you digital darkroom. Look at your photos for areas where there is a bright light source for any unwanted artifacts. DO not confuse lens flare with spots from your flash.
Sometimes lens flare can actually enhance a photo depending on what you want to say with the image. A lot of photo editing programs have a filter you can actually apply these lens flares, or sunspots. You can even use this effect to enhance the natural lens flare.
As you can see in this photo I had unwanted sun spots. Using Photoshop CS3 I used the clone tool to remove the sunspots and then adjusted the brightness /contrast, hue/saturation, and did a color match.
References
Cambridge in Color
flare, sunspots, lens, lens flare, digital photography
