Just beyond the light we can see … lies a snowy white world of infrared. I love playing in this spectrum. I think it undoubtedly appeals to my main attraction to photography … to create images not as they are, but as I see them in my mind’s eye.
My passion with photography stems from the opportunity to create, to think outside the box, and present an image of the world not as it stands … but, as I have visualized.
I created this image yesterday while up in the Cuyamaca mountains with our Landscape photography class. The day was beautiful and for awhile we had bright sunlight shining down on everything unsheltered. The conditions were perfect to play with the red wavelengths hidden from our sight.
Infrared light lives in a spectrum just out of reach of what our human eyes can see … 700 nanometers and beyond, to be precise. With an inexpensive infrared filter and a little manual photography know-how, this image was created in camera with the regular camera I use daily.
See, I had to put that last part in because there is a belief that in-camera infrared can only be done with a converted camera. This is not true.
INSIGHT: I put my camera in monochrome and then upped the notch by picking aggressive black & white settings: high contrast, high sharpening and a red filter … all in camera. This gave me an intense black & white image to begin with. I composed my scene, focused and then placed the 850nm infrared filter on my lens. I adjusted my focus point slightly closer, since infrared light focuses closer than visible light, and then fired away for a 30 second exposure.
This snowy white world of infrared light in monochrome is beautiful and continually surprises me, no matter how much I visualize.
The world is an amazing place.
My Camera and Me 