Today’s Post by Joe Farace
I brought the Beetle to life with a roar. Well. Not really a roar. A Volkswagen Bug doesn’t roar. But it sort of growled.—Jim Butcher
All photographs are about lighting but infrared photography is about capturing images with invisible light, which is why comparisons to traditional photography can be difficult. If you want to create a dramatic image, few things beat a beautiful sunrise photographed in vibrant colors. The same scene photographed in infrared may be disappointing unless there’s some IR reflective subject matter— foliage—to add some interest. That’s because the Wood Effect, which is the bright to white reproduction of the chlorophyll layer of deciduous plants, appears strongest at low sun levels in black-and-white IR images.
How I made this photograph: I captured this classic VW Beetle convertible at an outdoor car show using a Canon EOS 50D that had been converted to infrared by LifePixel. The lens used was a 16mm f/2.8 Zenitar lens that I picked up on eBay. Exposure was in Av mode with 1/125 sec at f/16 and ISO 200 with a plus one-third stop exposure compensation. The RAW file was processed in Silver Efex then the Sunlight filter from Color Efex Pro was added to warm it up and add a touch of infrared glow.
About Infrared Photography
Here’s an interesting fact about infrared photography: If the lighting looks great for standard photographs, such as a beautiful sunrise and sunset, it’s probably not going to work all that great for making infrared photographs. Don’t take my word for it; you need to experiment because you never know for sure what the results will be when working in infrared until you try.
There are no ‘official’ subjects for digital IR photography. Summer landscapes with leafy deciduous trees, lots of grass, and puffy clouds often make a great infrared picture. But you shouldn’t confine yourself to just shooting landscapes.
Some of the artists featured in my book, “The Complete Guide to Digital Infrared Photography,” like to photograph people in IR but I also like to shoot cars. To insure sharp focus I set the manual focus 16mm lens using the hyperfocal technique. When it come s to infrared, I think that any subject is fair game if you want to produce digital infrared images, My advice is to experiment to discover what works. You may be surprised at the variety of subject matter you can find for your IR photographs.
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.