Photography is all about light but where infrared photography is concerned you’re capturing images using invisible light, which is why comparisons to traditional photography can be difficult to make. If you want to create a dramatic image, few things beat a beautiful sunrise photographed in color. The same scene photographed in infrared might be disappointing unless there’s some IR reflective subject matter in the frame to add interest.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them. —Liberty Hyde Bailey
Last year my pal Barry Staver and I did a PhotoWalk at Denver’s Hudson Gardens with each of us making images using our infrared-converted mirrorless cameras. Over the past year I’ve posted photographs from that excursion. (Just type “Hudson Gardens” in the Search function—the Magnifying Glass icon—and you’ll see many posts with images that were made there.)
In 1941, Hudson Gardens began as the private garden of Colonel King C. and Evelyn Leigh Hudson. Before her death in 1988, Evelyn created “The King C. Hudson & Evelyn Leigh Hudson Foundation, Inc.” and in 1996 Hudson Gardens was opened to the public. The gardens vary from high, dry prairie to river wetlands and feature plants that thrive in the dry Colorado climate. The gardens include: Conifer Grove, Deciduous Woodland, Garden Canopy, Herb Garden, Iris Bed, Mary Carter Greenway, Ornamental Grass Garden, Oval Garden, Rock Garden Canyon, Rose Garden, Secret Garden, Shade Garden, Water Garden, Wetlands, Songbird Gardens, Vegetable Garden, Pumpkin Patch, and a Xeriscape Garden. There’s lots to photograph there using visible or infrared light.
How I Made this Photograph: To photograph Hudson Lake and Justin’s Bridge, I used a Panasonic Lumix G5 with an M. Zuiko 17mm f/1.8 lens. The exposure was 1/200 sec at f/16 and ISO 400. The RAW file was converted to monochrome using Silver Efex ‘s Full Spectrum (smooth) preset and platinum toned in PhotoKit to give it a little warmth.
Cameras for the PhotoWalk
Like last year I brought two different camera with me for the PhotoWalk but this time they were different. I again brought my Panasonic Lumix GX1 that I purchased used from Roberts Camera and was converted to infrared by Life Pixel using their Hyper Color filter. The lens used was a Lumix 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH kit lens. You can read some of my subsequent thoughts about this lens based on my experience during this PhotoWalk here.)
The other camera and the one featured in today’s post is a Panasonic Lumix G5 that was converted by Life Pixel with their Standard IR (720nm) filter. The Panasonic G5 began shipping in the US from October, 2012 with a body-only price of $699.99. Mine was purchased new but after the introduction of the G6 for less than $500 and included the G Vario 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 MEGA O.I.S. kit lens. In this case the lens used was an Olympus M.Zuiko17mm F1.8. That lens has a DxO rating of 25, which places it just below their “average” ranking. While I haven’t tested this lens as I did (post shoot) with the Lumix 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. I plan to do so real soon now. Meanwhile, the empirical results from this shoot show it be more than acceptably sharp.
Photo Walkin’
For those of you who are interested in how I did walking around the thirty-acre gardens, I did OK. I (deliberately) left my cane at home and about three-quarters of the way around the park, it started getting warmer and I began to feel some discomfort in my left leg. But I managed to trek on making to the parking lot; Barry was kind enough to drive. Now back to the photos.
Sometime after making a similar but vertical and color version of the above image, I switched from color to the monochrome-oriented Lumix G5 where the rest of my day’s images were made. In the upcoming Part II of the Hudson Garden PhotoWalk posts, well take a look at the first part of our PhotoWalk, which were all shot in Infrared color with the Hyper Color-converted Lumix GX1..
How I Made this Photograph: The camera used for this image was a Panasonic Lumix G5 and M.Zuiko 17mm f/1.8 lens. The exposure was 1/200 sec at f.16 and ISO 400 but upon looking at the files on my computer, I noticed that this camera/lens combination tended to produce slightly overexposed files, so I added a new layer to the RAW file and used a 40% “screen” function to lighten and lower the image file’s contrast. The file was then converted to monochrome using Silver Efex ‘s High Structure (harsh) preset and I applied the Glamour Glow filter from Color Efex to add some infrared “magic” and pushed the Glow Warmth slider a bit to slightly warm up the image.
To be continued—in Color
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.