Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“To the complaint, ‘There are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.” ―
As most of you probably know, I’m not really a dedicated landscape photographer but when I do make any landscape images I have my own way to approaching this genre. You can read about what I consider the most important aspects of capturing landscape images here. If you’re wondering where this methodology comes from, the post includes an anecdote about how I came up with the idea back when I was a photography student at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland.
How I made this photograph: Most of the landscape photography I make these days is related to my interest in infrared photography and occasionally with film photography. But I especially enjoy the look that’s produced by digital infrared converted cameras when making photographs such as this one that was shot in Zion National Park.
This image was made using a Canon DSLR that was converted to infrared using a typical infrared (720nm) filter for black and white photography. These days most of my IR photography is captured with either a Panasonic Lumix G5*, Lumix G6 or Lumix GX1, all of which were converted to infrared capture by Life Pixel using different kinds of filters, so each one of these camera produces different looking results.
Today’s featured image was made with a Canon EOS D30 that was converted to IR capture by a company that’s no longer in business and Tamron’s 11-18mm f/4.5-5.6 Di-II LD Aspherical lens (at 11mm.) The exposure was 1/125 sec at f/14 and ISO 40,0 pointing out the major advantage of using a IR converted camera—no tripod was required. A plus one and one-third stop exposure compensation was used to produce the exposure you see here. The RAW image was processed in Silver Efex, hit with a dash of the Glamour Glow filter from Color Efex and then applied platinum toning from Photo Kit 2 to achieve the final result you see.
*Look for two posts real soon now about shooting black and white images with my IR-converted Panasonic Lumix G5 with Standard IR (720nm) filter from Life Pixel at Hudson Gardens that had a Halloween theme going on. I plan on doing a companion post featuring color infrared images—I posted a teaser on my Instagram account—made with a Lumix GX1 and Life Pixel’s Hyper Color (no nanometers) filter.
I’ve found that Life Pixel does a great job with IR conversions and they’ve done most 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.
Used copies of my book, The Complete Guide to Digital Infrared Photography are currently available new from Amazon for $33.66 or used copies for less than four bucks, as I write this. Creative Digital Monochrome Effects has a chapter on IR photography and new copies are available from Amazon for $16.16 with used copies starting at less than three bucks, which is a heckuva deal.