Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Much to my wife’s consternation I’ve always wanted to visit Easter Island to, what else, photograph “the heads.” I’ll probably never make this bucket list trip so this infrared photograph made at the Arvada Center for the Performing Arts may be as close as I get.
The name “Easter Island” was given by the island’s first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who encountered it on Easter Sunday, April 5, 1722, while searching for Davis or David’s island. Roggeveen named it Paasch-Eyland , which is 18th-century Dutch for “Easter Island.” In Spanish its name is Isla de Pascua that also happens to mean “Easter Island.”
I’ve long been fascinated by Easter Island’s stone heads but so far haven’t yet been able to make the trip, so I’ll have to make do with this photograph of this large rabbit’s head sculpture that I shot in Arvada, Colorado.
How I made this photo: I call this image “The Real Easter Island” because it’s a rabbit head. (Get it?) It was shot using a Canon EOS 50D that was modified by LifePixel to capture monochrome infrared images using their Standard IR filter. The lens used was a Tamron AF18-200MM F/3.5-6.3 XR Di II at 80mm. Exposure was 1/100 sec at f/16 and ISO 400. The RAW file was converted to black and white using Silver Efex. I digitally toned a duplicate layer using PixelGenius’ PhotoKit, then used Adobe Photoshop’s Eraser tool to erase everything on that layer except the sculpture.
Life Pixel does a great job with IR conversions and they have done all of conversions for my Canon DSLRs as well as Panasonic Lumix G-series cameras. This is not a paid or sponsored endorsement, just my experience.
Copies of my book, The Complete Guide to Digital Infrared Photography, are available from Amazon for $19.51 or used starting at $15.52 as I write this. Creative Digital Monochrome Effects has a chapter on IR photography and is available for $9.39 or used starting at the bargain price of around two bucks as I write this.