Today’s Post by Joe Farace
We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt” – Walter Scott
We are in something of a snow drought in the Denver area, including here on Daisy Hill, which is 31.3 miles from the city. According to Colorado’s Channel 9 News, the state “has had its lowest snowpack season on record, with the state receiving only 62% of expected snow levels, less than two-thirds of what should be present at this point in the winter season.” The last measurable snow in Denver was on December 10, when 0.3 inches (7.6mm) fell, As far as the below image is concerned, that’s not snow but infrared…
It Ain’t Snow, It’s Infrared!
I made the infrared image at right on the grounds of The Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. The Arvada Center consists of the Arvada History Museum, three theaters, art galleries, music, dance, and theater rehearsal rooms, classrooms, a conference center and an amphitheater.
For a long time, the Center’s large parking lot was home to one of the biggest charity car shows in the Rocky Mountain West, the Hot Times Kool Cars Show that supported Children’s Hospital’s burn unit. It all came to a screeching halt when management changes at the Center decided otherwise. Now the show is but a fleeting memory but once upon a time, I entered my 1953 Packard Clipper in the show and while I didn’t win any prizes, it was the most fun car show I ever entered, no matter what car I brought.
How I made this photograph: Evergreens, like this blue spruce in the foreground of this image, have an unpredictable but decidedly less intense response to infrared capture, one that’s far different from how deciduous trees appear in these kinds of photography. The above image was captured using a Canon EOS D30 that was converted to IR capture by a company no longer in business using their standard infrared (720nm) filter. A Tamron AF18-200mm XR Di lens set at 18mm was used along with a handheld exposure of 1/100 sec at f/16 at ISO 400. The RAW file was converted to monochrome using Silver Efex and tweaked in Vivenza.
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.