It may be #monochromemonday, but it’s also National Pink Day. Each year National Pink Day colors the world in vibrant shades of pink and explores everything it represents. For my take on the color pink, you might want to look at my post, In the Pink with Erin.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” ―
If you’re not new to this blog then you already know that my personal philosophy is that photography should be fun. And if you are a new reader, WELCOME.
Part of having fun with photography is trying new things, which is a big part of my fascination with film photography. Also… infrared photography can be lots of fun because it helps you look at your world in a completely new and different way while inspiring you to create to images that look unlike any other technique you’re likely to try. That alone is a good enough reason to give digital infrared photography a try.
How I made this image: I photographed this scene at 17 Mile House Farm Park near Parker, Colorado, which seems to be constantly under restoration since I originally made this shot. I’m sure all the work will be finished real soon now. The camera used was a Panasonic Lumix G6 that was converted to infrared by Life Pixel using their Enhanced IR (665nm) filter. The lens was a Lumix G Vario 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens (at 12mm) that I wrote about in It’s Not the Sharpest Knife in the Drawer. The Av exposure was 1/500 sec at f/11 and ISO 400.
Every photographer knows something about shooting under visible light but there are other kinds of light that we can’t see. What we see in the world as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet are different waves of light. Shorter waves are blue and the longer ones appear red to our eyes. Every color’s wavelength is measured in nanometers (one billionth of a millimeter) or microns (one 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 at wavelength that are longer than 0.7 microns. When we feel the sun’s heat on our skin, we experience thermal infrared light.
Light that has wavelengths from 700 and 900nm is considered to be infrared light. Yet this band of infrared light is a thousand times wider than that of visible light and yet is completely invisible to our eyes. Infrared film and some video cameras can be sensitive to what’s known as near infrared and is the section of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) wavelengths that are nearest to the normal range but just past what we can see. This is also the type of IR light that some television remote controls use.
For more information about infrared photography, lease take a look at two of my YouTube videos, Joe Farace’s Videos. The first one is on 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 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.
Used copies of my book, The Complete Guide to Digital Infrared Photography are available from Amazon starting around thirteen 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.