Twelfth Night is celebrated 12 days after Christmas and this year falls on January 5. It marks the coming of Epiphany, a Christian is a feast day commemorating the visit of the Magi. William Shakespeare even wrote a play with the same name to close the Christmas season.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Everything visible came from the invisible world.” ―
Here’s a big surprise: Our eyes may see visible light but there is a entire range of other kinds of light including infrared and ultraviolet light that are invisible to the naked eye. By contrast, the sun’s heat on our skin is thermal infrared light, which is invisible heat energy that’s emitted by all objects. Thermal imaging is used to visualize heat patterns, and reveal temperature differences for night vision and industrial use.
Back to the visible: What you see as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet are different wavelengths of light. Shorter waves are blue and the longer ones appear red to our eyes. Each color’s wavelength is measured in nanometers or one billionth of a millimeter or microns that are a millionth of a meter. Red light begins at wavelengths of about 0.65 microns. Violet light has wavelengths around 0.4 microns and yellow light waves are 0.6 microns. Your eyes can’t see light with any wavelength longer than 0.7 microns.
It’s All About Invisible Light
Let’s tale a look at some of these types of light.Ultra Violet (UV) light comes from the Sun but the Earth’s ozone layer protects us from most of it. Many photographers keep UV aka Haze filters on their lenses as protection but the filters can reduce the amount of ultraviolet radiation striking a camera’s imaging sensor (or film) to suppress atmospheric haze. Here in Colorado, when photographing at altitudes of 14,000 feet or more, you should use a UV filter on your lens for your images to approximate the color correct view your brain sends to your eyes.
How I Made this Photograph: There are no ‘official’ subjects for digital infrared photography although I take a crack at the subject on my car photography Blog. Today’s image is probably one of the most traditional subjects for infrared photography and was made near Brighton, Colorado. It was shot on the grounds of a farm that had been abandoned as part of a highway project and is probably gone by now. It was shot with a Canon EOS D30 that was converted to infrared (720nm) by a company no longer in business. The lens used was a EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM at 28mm with an exposure of 1/100 sec at f/16 and ISO 400. The image was converted to monochrome with Silver Efex software with platinum toning by PhotoKit.
Astronomers have long used the infrared spectrum for astrophotography of distant non-terrestrial subjects but there are plenty of terrestrial applications for infrared photography in addition to the aesthetic, including forensic investigation and aerial crop or forest surveys. Light that has wavelengths from 700 and 900nm is typically referred to as infrared light. Surprisingly this band of infrared light is a thousand times wider than that of visible light and yet is completely invisible to our eyes. Why shoot infrared? I thin that…
…photography should be fun
My personal philosophy is that photography should be fun. Part of that fun is trying new techniques (as well as subject matter.) For me, digital and film infrared photography can be lots of fun because it let you look at your world in new ways allowing you to create images that are unlike any other technique you’re likely to try. For me, that alone is a good enough reason to try infrared digital photography.
Please check out two of my YouTube videos—Joe Farace’s Videos—about Infrared Photography: The first is about infrared Filters, the second video is about IR Camera Conversions.
I’ve found that Life Pixel does a great job with IR conversions and they’ve done some of the conversions for my Canon DSLRs and all of my Panasonic Lumix G-series cameras. This is not a paid or sponsored endorsement, just my experience.
New copies of my book, The Complete Guide to Digital Infrared Photography are available from Amazon for $44.59 with used copies starting around eight bucks as I write this. My book Creative Digital Monochrome Effects has a chapter on IR photography and is available new from Amazon for $11.46 with used copies starting around eight bucks as I write this.