It’s #monochromemonday and it’s also Act Happy Day, an annual event celebrated on the third Monday of March. It encourages consciously choosing to smile and acting happy to improve your mental outlook and help change the moods of the people around you.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
There’s something about the sound of a train that’s very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful.—Paul Simon
Mary was going through some of our boxes and boxes of 4×6-inch prints that had been made over the years by such long lost companies like Robert Waxman Camera and Seattle FilmWorks. She was looking for some specific family pictures while I watched YouTube videos of people running LEGO trains and she would occasionally comment on some of the old photographs she was discovering. Try having this much fun, looking at thumbnails of digital images.
Looking Back…
As Mary was going through the boxes she would sometimes stop and say, “look at this photo when your hair wasn’t grey, ha, ha” and stuff like that and occasionally she would say, “Look at all these 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 photograph: I also like infrared photography. The above IR image was made at the Colorado Railroad Museum a museum that’s located along the former Colorado and Southern Railway line. This photograph was shot using a Panasonic Lumix G5 mirrorless camera that had been converted to infrared capture by Life Pixel using their Standard IR (720nm) conversion. The lens \ was a Leica M-Mount Voigtlander Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 Aspherical III that I borrowed from a friend. It was mounted to the camera using a Fotodiox M to Micro Four-thirds adapter that seems to have slightly gone up in price since I bought mine but is still quite affordable. The RAW file was converted to monochrome with Silver Efex and then tweaked using Color Efex to warm up the image.
Tip: You can try infrared photography yourself by having one of your old cameras that’s sitting around gathering dust converted to IR-only operation. Read about your options here.
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.
My book, The Complete Guide to Digital Infrared Photography is currently not available from Amazon as I write this. I’ve seen used copies on eBay for less than $30. My book Creative Digital Monochrome Effects has a chapter on IR photography is no longer available from Amazon as I write this but I’ve seen copies on eBay for seven bucks.