About 2 years ago while I was surfing the web for inspiration I stumbled upon Nathan Wirth's works. His "Slice of silence" project really caught my eye so I started reading about him and his techniques and I found out that he shoots a lot of infrared photography.
Infrared...hmmm, that sounds interesting. So after a few days of research I got myself an IR 720Nm infrared filter and started experimenting.
The first bump I hit when I went out the first time to do some infrared testing was that I should have taken my tripod with me because the exposure times would be well over 30 sec. The second thing I found out is that for you to get a better chance of a nice infrared image you should go out shooting when you're not suppose to. What I mean by that is for you to get a great IR image you should go out in the middle of a bright sunny day when everyone tells you that you should't photograph because of the harsh light. Even in bright light you should bump up the ISO to have an exposure time of under 30sec.
I love long exposures so for me that increased time is a bonus. Depending on your camera's IR blocking filter you should have a more or less successful IR image.
Infrared images work great in black and white.The sky turns black and the foliage of the trees (or any vegetation that is green) becomes white.
Color is fine too, if you're a fan of wonky colors.
The post processing part is another matter. Editing an IR image isn't that simple. When you import your RAW file the first thing you'll notice is that the image is red and lacks contrast. So you begin tweaking the white balance, bringing up the contrasts etc until you have a weird looking image where the trees are blue and the sky has an orange/red tint.
Then you open the image in Photoshop, slap a channel mixer on top and you invert the red and blue channels.
After that you get a half decent image with wonky colors. When you get to that step it's up to you what you do with it. You leave it like that or you convert it in black and white.
Either way it's something you should try. You can get some really nice results.
I took maybe 2-300 test images and ended up with these images I presented here.
It's not an easy type of photography. It's quite demanding but the results really worth the while.
If you liked this post, please consider upvoting, commenting or sharing