From the lighthouse, in black and white

The trip to Cape May, NJ did not result in the best infrared light, especially for false color images. I did manage, however, to get some decent pictures when converted to black and white. All these are taken from the lighthouse.

The green color in the leaves has a strong IR reflection, making the trees to appear almost white.

The beach and the sand...

More trees in a picture with the hotspots typical from some IR images.

Not a good Infrarred Day

Cape May, NJ. 5/2008

Not all days are good for shooting in Infrarred. The experts say that the days or the times that seem to be good for regular photography are not good for Infrarred photography. My problem is that I still don't know what is a good day for regular photography, let alone infrared. And besides, when you find yourself at a place, with your infrared camera, you better start shooting it. Just in case...

So that was not a good day for IR photography. Looking back, the sun was bright, there were no clouds and the lighthouse at Cape May did not reflect much IR right. The tree leaves did some, but overall, all the pictures had a strong color cast.

After some processing, mostly adjusting the neutral tones, this is what I get:

Changing it a little bit, gives me this one. Nothing too different, just the cast is a bit different.

Or with choosing a different point as my neutral one:

They were all basically the same color distribution, just a different cast. The one below is applying a sepia filter after converting to black and white IR:

And finally just a regular B&W:

So nothing to be too excited about as far as IR photography goes.

Playing with White Balance

Or better, I should say playing with the neutral point as part of the post processing after an IR shot. The fist picture being B&W does not require this type of adjustment, but I just showed it for comparison.

Now, when we start venturing into the land of false color things can be a bit more complex. After all, we do not see infrared, so any color information is not real. Pretty much we choose what we like or what we find appealing.

It is all about choosing some pixels and deciding that those pixels will be the neutral reference based on our preferences.

All these three false color pictures have color information very similar to one another. Depending on the pixels that we choose the results may be totally useless. These are just three modes of pictures that I found acceptable.

Despite the overall change of color cast there are some colors that remain unchanged. At the very end, the color is not there so your choice is as good as mine.

More water, serenity and tranquility

All these pictures are from the same place as the last post. They come from experimenting with several conversions to false color, especially setting up the white balance. We'll see how it goes later, when I have more control over the white balance when taking the picture. I have some other IR taken in RAW, but I still need to learn how to deal with that. One of these days. Meanwhile, some others that I like.

I like this one below. The white of the trees always seems very appealing.

More water and trees.

And a place to sit down, relax and contemplate what is around us.

Water

The serenity, tranquility and peace of water seen with different eyes.

Even for the inhabitants of the pond

Tall grass moving with the wind

And just a refuge from everything

Clouds, clouds and more clouds, part II

These pictures are the same clouds from the previous post, but now processed from Black & White. I guess it is just a matter of taste. A stronger contrast between shadows and highlights here or the unnatural colors from the previous post.

Either one gives very nice pictures, different from what we see every day. I especially like how the shape of the clouds are much more defined here compared to visible light. Reflectivity to IR of water vapor does the trick!

The green color in the trees reflects infrared very strongly, so they appear almost white in these pictures:

Different trees, all full of green, reflect IR light differently:

One of my all time favorites, both for B&W as well as false color:

I just thought that it is hard to appreciate how much clouds appear different in infrared than in visible light. Next time I will have to take pictures of clouds IR and also in visible light, so we can compare them better.

Clouds, clouds and more clouds.

Clouds seem to be one of the favorite subjects in Infrared photography. Clouds seem to have much more texture when photographed in IR rather than visible light. I am not that happy with how my pictures of clouds turned out to be; maybe these are not taken with the best light or during the best day. Still, I think they have some stronger dramatic effects:

I especially like the contrast between the clouds and the sky, even more when we have some ground area covered in grass:

And for a different type of processing, less strong, a bit more natural:

A couple more pictures showing the contrast between the trees, the sky and the clouds, these with a stronger effect:

And finally, one of my favorites:

I still need to do a better job of removing the different color casts and tints, but for now this will be it.

Pinhole photography

Before I started playing with Infrared Photography, I had been experimenting with Pinhole Photography. It dates back to the origins of photography when the light from the subject was not collected by a lens, but by a very small hole on the front of the camera - a pinhole-. There are a lot of resources to learn about this technique, for example The Pinhole Gallery or this tutorial from PhotoNet among others.

One of my pinhole cameras is a 4x5 camera from a kit sold by Bender Photographic . Somehow I liked the combination of this older technique with the use of film plates. And besides, this gives me the advantage of having a negative with a size of 4 by 5 inches, so I didn't have to worry about enlarging the image. The picture shows the camera I built; the round hole in the middle is not the pinhole per se. There is a metal plate attached to the round hole that is the one that holds the pinhole.

Changing how that the middle wooden part is connected to the body of the camera, we change the distance betwe

en the pinhole and the film; something similar to the focal distance in regular photography. In the picture on the left is also possible to see the thin piece of metal that has the pinshole in it.

A single sheet of film goes inside the film holder on the back. Actually, each film holder has two sheets of film, one on each side. This allows for two pictures before having the remove the exposed film and load new film. Of course, it has to be in total darkness and somehow it is not that easy.

Part of the attractionf of pinhole photography is that it is hard to know in advance how the picture will come out. For one, there is no visor or viewfinder. Also, the wider angles typical of pinshole photography makes it hard to imagine how the picture will come out. If it comes out at all, that is. Because we have to guesstimate exposure times that range from several seconds to few minutes.

A couple of examples of pictures that I took with this camera. These images are from directly scanning the negatives that I developed myself:

Because of the absurdly high f number, the image in pinhole photography has a large zone in which is in focus. The softness of the image is also typical from pinhole photography.

Also, the objects closer to the camera appear distorted in their own way, typical in this type of photography.

Not bad considering that it is a camera without a lens, huh?

In Black and White

Trees seem to be one of the most popular subjects for infrared photography. These are some pictures of trees in infrared B&W. All from a converted Nikon D-40, April 2007.

I like the picture below: The grass and the leaves of the trees reflect the most infrared light and so they appear white:

How would these images look with some color processing? There are many variations, but these are my favorites:

And:

Because of being a false color there are many possibilities to coming out with a final image.

First experiments in digital Infrared

Other than some experiments using 6x6 infrared film, I started playing with infrared photography with a modified Nikon D-40 in 2007. I am still not sure about the results; some of the images do not resemble the typical infrared images shown in books. Maybe it is just a matter of taking them when the light is just right.

Another issue is that I have not been able to set up the correct White Balance with the typical approach of using a patch of grass. For what I have read, it seems that a modified D-40 does not allow this feature. Grrrr!!!

These pictures were taken with a daylight White Balance and doing some post-processing. They were all taken in March 2007 at the Frances Slocum State Park in Pennsylvania.


Image straight out of the camera:

After converting to Black and White, it has a more typical infrared look, especially the trees in the background:

The next images are the result of playing with different types of color conversion:

Swapping the blue and red channels:

Modifying the image in LAB mode:

Still have to figure out a lot of different things, but sure it is fun !!!

The secret life of pixels

This is a place to record my experiments in different types of photography that I like: Infrared, pinhole, pictures of weird things... and to share them with friends and family.

Most of the pictures here are in low-resolution mode so I will not clog bandwidth.