Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“To me, infrared photography is not a special effect like some Instagram filter, it’s a different way of looking at photography and light and the world itself.”— Dean McIntyre
Even though I’ve been experimenting with IR capture since the 1970’s with Kodak’s color and black & white infrared film, after I converted several of my Panasonic Lumix mirrorless cameras to infrared capture I had the same kind of euphoria that everyone having their first IR experience feels.
Here’s what happens when you shoot infrared for the first time: You run around taking pictures of everything and stuff that appears mundane when captured in color but looks so different in infrared, so much that my wife Mary calls the effect “dreamy.”
Different Subject Matter
In a previous post called Infrared Portraits and Depth-of-Field, I featured an environmental portrait of Tia Stoneman that was made using color infrared techniques. It’s a different look from today’s featured photograph, one that some may like, while others may not. In fact that image was one of the images that was cut by the publisher from my book Available Light Glamour Photography. because the editor didn’t like it.
This hatred seems to be a trend amongst a certain kind of magazine and book editors and publishers, since the finished image that’s featured in this post was cut from an article I wrote for a national publication that is aimed at professional photographers. It was cut from the magazine by an editor who deemed that it was “demonic.” Although nobody could possibly consider the lovely Ms. Stoneman as anything but angelic. Maybe I understand their position… at least somewhat. Infrared portraiture is not to everyone’s taste.
How I made this shot: The above image was captured at Hudson Gardens, a botanical garden and event venue that’s located in Littleton, Colorado. It was shot last summer during a PhotoWalk with my pal Barry Staver, using a Panasonic Lumix GX1 that had LifePixel’s Hyper Color infrared conversion. The lens used was a Lumix G Vario 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens at 13mm. The exposure was 1/640 sec at f/13 and ISO 400. The RAW file was processed using some of the techniques that are covered in my post, Is White Balance Important in Infrared Photography? before applying a Photoshop action (Hyper Color to Super Color) that LifePixel sometimes offers with conversions, at least they did when I had my GX1 converted. I think the effect adds a warm, nostalgic feel to the photograph. The fial touch was a light layer of the Glamour Glow filter from Color Efex,
But Think About This…
Due to the general unpredictability of the kind of results that are produced by all infrared photography, not all IR portraits turn out as well as Ms. Stoneman’s (or at least I think so) but why not give it a try. But no matter what happens I promise that you will have fun.
I’ve found that Life Pixel does a great job with IR conversions and they’ve done most of the conversions for some of my Canon DSLRs and all of my Panasonic Lumix G-series cameras. This is not a paid or sponsored endorsement, just my experience.
My book, The Complete Guide to Digital Infrared Photography is available from Amazon with used copies available for $23.77 as I write this. Creative Digital Monochrome Effects has a chapter on IR photography and is available from Amazon new for $11.46 with used copies starting for around six bucks.