Today’s Post by Joe Farace
It’s Love Week here on my photography how-to Blog and I’m trying to keep the theme of “love” going to see how long it might last…
A few weeks Mary and I were going through some of our boxes (and boxes) of 4×6 prints that had been made over the years by such long lost names as Robert Waxman Camera and Seattle FilmWorks. Mary was looking for some specific family pictures and as I watched YouTube videos of LEGO and she would occasionally comment on some of the old photographs she was uncovering. (Try having this much fun, looking at thumbnails of digital images.)
As she was going through the photograph she would say things like, “look at this photo when you your beard was black, ha, ha” and stuff like that and then she says. “Look at all the pictures of trains”. And every few seconds she would repeat,” more trains!” Yes but you already know that I like trains.
How I Made this Photo: I also like infrared photography. This image of a classic locomotive and consist was made at the Colorado Railroad Museum and was shot with a Canon EOS 50D that had been converted to infrared capture by Life Pixel. The low angle was possible, not by me lying on the ground but from the fact the train sits on a hill, so I was shooting up at it to get this dramatic angle. Lens was the (no longer available) Tamron 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD (at 31mm) with an exposure of 1/100 sec at f/16 and ISO 400, with a pl;us two-thirds exposure compensation.
The image was captured as RAW+JPEG files and was initially converted to monochrome using a set of Photoshop actions that were obtained though Life Pixel. Next I applied the Vivenza filter, with some corner burning and Platinum toning from PhotoKit, to give the image a more vintage look.
PS. I know this is my second infrared post this week but I can’t help myself: I Heart Trains (Photography)
I’ve found that Life Pixel does a great job with IR conversions and they have done most of my Canon DSLRs and all of my Panasonic Lumix G-series mirrorless 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 for $41.99 but used copies starting around eighteen bucks as I write this. Creative Digital Monochrome Effects has a chapter on IR photography and is available from Amazon for $23.80 with used copies start around two bucks, less than your next cup of joe at Starbucks.