I’ve given #monochromemonday the day off. In its stead, I’m taking a look at the colorful world of infrared photography. This photographic genre doesn’t have to be in black and white; infrared can also provide a color impression of “the world of invisible light.” #monochromemonday will be back next week with what, I think, is a fascinating featured image.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.—Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Astronomers have long delved into the infrared spectrum for astrophotography of distant non-terrestrial subjects but there are plenty of terrestrial applications for infrared photography too, including forensic investigation and aerial crop or forest surveys.
My personal philosophy is that photography should be fun and, to me, part of having fun is trying new things. Digital IR photographs can be lots of fun to make because it helps you look at your world in a new way and lets you create images that look unlike any other technique that you’re likely to try. That alone is a good enough reason to try infrared digital photography.
How I Made this Photo: I photographed my favorite tree —click that link for another color interpretation—in McCabe Meadows, near Parker. Colorado. Those are not fall colors; this photograph was made in May! I used a Panasonic Lumix GX1 that had converted to infrared capture with Life Pixel’s Hyper Color filter. The lens used was an Olympus M.Zuiko 17mm f/2.8. The exposure was 1/2500 sec at f/5 and ISO 160. The RAW file was processed using one of Life Pixel’s proprietary Photoshop actions.
Its About Invisible Light
Every photographer knows about working with visible light but there are other kinds of light we can’t see. What we see as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet are different wavelengths of light. Shorter waves of light are blue and the longer ones appear red to our eyes. Every color’s wavelength is measured in nanometers or one billionth of a millimeter or microns that are a 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 with any wavelength that’s longer than 0.7 microns. We also experience thermal infrared light when we feel the sun’s heat of the on our skin but that kind of infrared does not respond to the same kind of camera and filters commonly used in IR photography, like the featured image. Instead you’ll need specialized gear like the FLIR Thermal Camera.
For the purpose of this blog and my personal photography, light that has wavelengths from 700 and 900nm are referred to as infrared light. I turns out that 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 are sensitive to what is called near infrared. This is also the type of IR light that your television remote control *uses.
Geek Alert: Ultra Violet (UV) light comes from the Sun but the Earth’s ozone layer protects us from most of this light. Many photographers keep UV aka Haze filters on all of their lenses as protection but these filters also reduce the amount of ultraviolet radiation striking the image sensor or film and suppresses any atmospheric haze or dust. When photographing at altitudes of 14,000 feet or more, you really need to use a UV filter in front of your lens to approximate the same color correct view your eyes send to your brain .
Life Pixel does a good job with IR conversions and they have done most of the conversions for my Canon DSLRs as well as all of 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 used from Amazon for $18.39 as I write this. My book Creative Digital Monochrome Effects has a chapter on IR photography and is available new from Amazon for $19.03 with used copies starting around six bucks