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Infrared: Behind the Image

again, we'll be talking about what? There's what's known as near and far infrared portions of the spectrum. When is the thermal that's being used for military work? You know, see through walls and that sort of stuff? That's not what we're talking about. I can't see through clothes for the most part, with your infrared photography. It's not that kind of creepy stuff, but it does have that aspect of thermal. If you were to shoot as an example, a, uh when I do figure work, if the woman is pregnant, you actually get a different look because there's so much blood flow going through, especially the tummy and things like that. You're not seeing the baby, but you actually see it get a different look because the body is just on overdrive, making another little human being inside there. So anyway, very exciting in terms of what it's doing. This is actually in the middle of summer in Yosemite Valley. This isn't snow. This is all bright line green, and so that again is giving us a very different l...

ook in terms of our images. Speaking of figure, I did get approval to do some figure work this is a figure work you're seeing. We'll put that on too long because it's for some people that's gonna be really distracting. But in terms of the figure, work and foliage, I love it. And I love even the CPS in the science in terms of the human figure, just because of what it does to skin tone. And the difference is that you get with what would have been a light body on a very dark foliage background. And here we get the globe not only of the human body but also of the foliage as well. So I love that other ones. In terms of landscape. You'll notice another shop that you'll see in a second from Monument Valley, Um, because of the contrast inherent in the file. Beautiful. And here we have the dark because this is basically a sunrise. We have the dark foreground in the rock that's not omitting the light, and in this case, the skies going like rather than dark. Because we have cloud and we're actually getting the moisture in the air is actually causing it to be more light, more reflective than a traditional infrared, where we have black skies and like poor ground. So there's not a set. Look where you'd say Well, in parades always have black skies. As an example, you can see this sunset. This is actually taken it sunset in Yosemite and it has a a very lights guy to it, Um, another, um, way of shaping infrared. And this gets into our special effects. We've done some hand tinting. This is taken with this one camera right here. This is the Olympus Pan Siri's, the pl one of their pl five. Their light, Siri's wonderful little camera to emperor to convert to infrared doesn't quite give me the color range that I like in other sensors. Both the canon here and this is a Nikon DSLR that has been converted has a greater range of science and CPS to it. So in this case, you'll notice that I've hand tinted the file a little bit. But by putting on a fish eye lens on it, I'm able to get a mawr dramatic scene in terms of this vertical one that's been heavily cropped. Teoh, give me my vertical format for it. I think I've got another one of this scene of the girls, uh, in here that, um, shows you that seen with a very different here it is. So here is backlit and again using, not cropping in on this scene. And pretty much the straight shot coming from this, uh, Olympus pen. Siri's. As I mentioned, it doesn't have the CPS in science. And so I'm getting much more a monochromatic look. So as even though I love the camera, I love how it works. You'll see some more images. I was using it in the field a couple days ago. It's more monochromatic in terms off the scene. It doesn't have this range to it. I used a standard infrared conversion and that conversion on something like the Canon G. Siri's is gonna have more color built into it, whereas here the straight conversion is more monochromatic. So, again, that's up to you. Whether you like that color or not, I actually prefer having a little bit more color into it. Even though I love the camera, it's not quite giving me that range as an example that we're seeing here in the olden days. Go back speaking about different cameras on, and I think we're gonna have to go into the technology to find a sample here. When I started doing infrared a 1,000,000 years ago, probably about and 15 years ago, this right here is the standard infrared conversion. There was really only one main camera that could do it because nobody was doing conversions. And so we had to find a digital camera that had no hot mirror built into it. It had no infrared inhibitor. In a sense, it was broken, right? It didn't have. It wasn't capturing the quality images that the current generation of digital cameras capture because it was allowing a full spectrum to come in. It was a full camera camp camera. And this is one of the original damage cameras that you can still get online. And this is the capture that you'd get. We weren't even doing custom. White balance is that this camera doesn't even shoot raw. So it was a J peg shot. This is how that camera I'm shoots the infrared spectrum, but it's still allowed us to do some amazing dramatic stuff with it. And that is when I show that because one of my favorite shots in terms of the samples is this hand tinted effect that you've probably You've been with me over the years. You've seen me use and I don't think we'll hand tent. This one will do a different one. But this is that image then converted into black and white and then hand tinted again, giving kind of an old postcard. Look, when I do hand tinting, I'm not trying to make it look like a full color image. I've got cameras that shoot pro color, thank you very much. So when I do hand tinting of black and white images, whether they're infrared or traditional black and white, I kind of go for that old postcard look. And again, we'll be doing that this afternoon. But this shows you in the olden days what we would do to work with the original types of images we were getting from infrared cameras. Uh, and also with that when we would go in, we would because we didn't have the resolution and we weren't quite getting the We were actually screwing on a black piece of glass on top of the damage. Regular infrared things like 89 b would be a standard infrared filter that you put on to it. We were much longer in terms of our shutter speeds, would have to be really careful. Oftentimes on a tripod there you could hand hold it. And because of that we were taking advantage of motion. Blur another older infrared shot here that's also been hand tinted and in this case, taking advantage of these shore slower shutter speeds. Toe actually have the hula dance and taking advantage. What was a bug? Slower shutter speeds turned it into a feature. Let's do a little motion blur and actually have that motion be part of the story. So again, this are old infrared taken with the damage the old marsh system. Okay, let's do some other. And again, it's things like this where I'm using that motion blur we touched on yesterday. That motion blur is actually one of the things that I love about any type of photography. When you combine the ethereal nature of infrared with motion blur, you really For me, that's one of the most exciting things about infrared is when you combine that, um, motion blur with infrared and that again, some of the samples that I was showing I'm yesterday in terms of motion Blur were in infrared spectrum. I'm looking for a shot from TD to show that one. Like I said, I threw in a bunch of samples at the last second, and that's giving me doubles of my images. And the one sample that I'm looking at looking for related to the motion blur what you'll have to pull in. They did a whole Siri's on the island of Maria in Tahiti. Um, here we go and, ah, one of my favorite things was this shot using the motion blur shot from a mope ed don't recommend that because it's hard to be a passenger in the mo peds. That mentality tends to mean that you're driving the moped head while shooting one handed, actually. And I never did that. I was on the back of a moped head and somebody else was driving. And because I would never recommend that, because if you guys do that and you get in trouble, your Jack said so we won't We won't go there. I was definitely a passenger. Never, ever shoot motion blur with that, okay? And also Monument Valley will just show this image that we've been showing it the last few days of infrared using again a pocket camera. Little story that I mentioned yesterday in terms of why I think I like this shot. Aside from the back, it's got a psychotic person up there in the art arch that is highly illegal and definitely not recommended. Um, was that in terms of our use of pocket cameras, whether full color or infrared, have you ever been to this place in Monument Valley? Um, you know that there's literally every single sunrise. There's 100 photographers lined up just waiting to shoot this shot and you get the shot of the sun below the arch. And then people wait and you get a few shots here and you wait for it to come above it, but usually it below. I'm lighting up. This this arch is actually over the cliff wall. If I'm here and this is a cliff wall, the arch actually goes over the cliff and therefore the sun hits the cliff, comes up and hits this arch. That's what's going on here with this. One of the arch is lit from below, and I'll show you a full color image, so you get a feel for it. Very, very spectacular shot. The thing is, is that it's virtually impossible to get a wide angle shot without 1000 people in it. You just can't being there because you're in the line. If you were in front of somebody, you'd get shot or hurt or punched or something like that. Unless, of course, you've got a little pocket camera and you say, Excuse me when people are you know they've already got their shots below excuse may pretend to be a cute little person with a little toy camera, and we just, uh, I ran up and said, Excuse me to a few people in front. You mind if I take a shot real quick? Just Oh, sure, Then that cute little pretend camera let the guy shoot. I went up there in handheld click, click, click, click, click, click, click, probably shot off 10 shots really quick with my pocket infrared camera and, of course, could stitch it into basically what is a you know, how did make a pixel file. In terms of this, this is a lower his version of it. But the stitching the infrared is giving may I think a beautiful, monochromatic version of the scene and combining it with the view, the panoramic nature of it. Very unique shot. And it's a combination of both panorama and the infrared technology. Okay, let's do it, I mentioned Portrait. Um, this is again lowers version of an image, more or less as it's coming out of the camera. And this is what's interesting about not only certain types of clothing with certain types of hair with shooting, portrait's and infrared. And that is that you have these subtleties or in this case, when you crank up your vibrance, which we dio. Yes, you already know I'm subtle is nowhere in the definition of my photography, so actually removing the yellow, which is normally part of the scene, as we're seeing in some of these landscapes here, and I'm exaggerating the blues. But this is basically the look, and you're seeing this very uniform light. If you look at it, you go. Where's the light source coming from? Well, really nowhere, right? That's is the unique thing about these Portrait's within, and you notice in that figure shot. The light actually is coming from the skin from the radiation coming off the body, so it makes for these beautiful, ethereal portrait's and figure work. Let's do another one here we're again. This case I've left a little bit of the yellow. Sometimes you'll see when we get into light room, I'll shift the yellow toward the orange portion of the spectrum, so it's a little bit less John Dace and a little bit more, you know, skin tone. But I often love leaving in the blues. And again, this is pretty much what was seen on the back of the camera. I'm lightning it up. I may be exaggerating some high key. You'll notice here. There's some lightning going on in terms of, um, and this is actually definitely a low rez version of the file. But I'm definitely I'm lightning the edge, actually adding a little light vignette to exaggerate this high key. I'm aspect of the file. So again, in terms of portrait, will see if we've got a fume or portrait's here again. One of my favorites from Molokai Thistle again is shot with our pen system, which is more monochromatic to begin with. The nice thing about the pen versus something like you're all in one camera of the G series, Of course, is that being a micro 4/3 camera, it has replaceable lenses on it. So you can get what sort of glass, as it were that you'd like in terms of the past class. The F stop that's able to get you're more telephoto lenses and things like that. But it's giving me this beautiful okay in the background in terms of being able to throw out the scene out of focus. Absolutely love it again. It's this ethereal, otherworldly aspect to it. And you again you see the how the light is falling on the model here. And where is the light coming from? Well, there's really no, I mean, it's actually dramatic. You can tell from the background it's actually almost towards sunset. But because of the infrared, I'm getting this glow coming from the skin tone, which is why I love it when we see on some other wounds. Let's do another figure now that you can see that I really love the high key related to that. I exaggerate that because that effect of lightning so I'm gonna dio everything I can to exaggerate this high key aspect of the file. So that, again is another portrait. Taking advantage of that. These are Mawr figure studies on Molokai, where we're using that c p a. That gold color in our skies, as well as keeping our foliage on the cool side. But again, it's this extraterrestrial feel that you're getting to it because of the glow coming from in this case, the palm trees primarily or what are making this scene so ethereal? Here is those same three hula dancers here again, we're getting the blues. I'm showing up in their bullets on their crowns and leaving the CPS in the skyline. So again, I love it for these, um, very unique color tones. And there's nothing stopping from also having it pure, monochromatic, whether you like that color or not that blue. I think I've got the same model where I've left the color in and you'll see the distinction between, um the hair left in this blue color and ah, and the hair in this case going to the monochromatic. I'll see if I've got this particular set, this model with the blue hair, it doesn't look like I've had her, but it was very similar. Teoh, this model that we had here, where we're getting that a look in terms of straight out of the camera I showed yesterday. Actually, here we go. So there is that same shot, um, leaving the color in on the file. Um, again. I love that ability to have this accent color. And I love the blue. This is coming again from a cannon. I'm g g nine and older. One I since updated to the G 15 which has a much better lower noise in low light situations. So that's one of my favorite infrared cameras. Is that g 15 now back to another one using monochromatic coming from our pen, Siri's infrared and, uh, let's see here they still lives the grunge aspect of it. Because of this monochromatic any type of black and white work when you're dealing with still lives. It's fun because of the contrast that we're getting with the foliage. It's really nice for these areas where you're doing a still life associated with the proverbial junkyard architecture or things like that because of how the light is interacting with an inorganic subject next to an organic subject. So that play of one element off another. We talked yesterday about one of the main things that I look for in my creative photography is the play of contrast of one element off another, even more so than the play of Light and shadow, which is just one type of contrast, I'll also be playing off other areas of contrast. Light, dark, textured, smooth, organic, inorganic, big, small, all these different ways of bringing dramatic tension in your file. By contrast, in this case, there's nothing more dramatic than the both the contrast of tone of the foliage versus the junk as well as you know, smooth versus textured, etcetera, etcetera. So again, I like that. I also mentioned that I like it for travel photography just because it allows you to get some beautiful, monochromatic work any time of the day. And so again, I'm usually have one in there. Sometimes I get a little carried away with it. This is Central Park, but again, the ability to what would have been dark water with dark sky with dark foliage, basically of what would make a very poor black and white seen by shooting at an infrared, is giving me the contrast of the foliage against the sky and the water the nice thing about water, and I notice a lot of my scenes related to infrared have water in them because they're basically reflecting the sky. The same sort of absorption of the infrared portion of the spectrum that's going to give us our very jet black sky or the contracts of the sky and the clouds is going to do the exact same thing in the water. So you're getting this beautiful black jet black water in addition to this very light foliage. Again, I think makes for just a beautiful, monochromatic imagery. I do use it sometimes. Four, um, action there was somebody was just mentioning that there was a photographer, Sean entire hockey, uh, competition game in infrared, which I thought was interesting because of the I don't know, I've never shot. I don't live around snow and coldness. I live in San Diego, and I've got no idea what infrared does in a snowy situation, but in terms of that thermal aspect would be interesting. I usually I'm not a fan for shooting it related to sports in general just because there's really no main benefit and parade from that standpoint. Except, of course, we're getting again that if its skin surfing um, a unclothed body were getting figure work. So this is putting a telephoto onto my infrared camera, this Nikon SLR and using it for sports. And again, I'm able to shoot fast enough. You'll notice that I'm panning with Seen. The white water in the background is blurred, so you can't quite get that same shutter speed that you would get with a full color camera. So again, as a deep hole, it's really not set up for high speed photography. It's not what I'd recommend, but it does because of how it shapes, um, human skin. It is, I think, you know, is a viable option. Okay, let's see what other samples again? Subtleties of color in the scene again emphasizing the foliage. But in this case, that seed pods on this palm were reflecting a different portion of the spectrum, giving me the cools versus the warms of the foliage. Sometimes again, I do use it for, um, straight monochromatic, not using the color. This one, I'm exaggerating. It is a sunrise again over on Molokai, and this kind of time I'm using a creative white balance, basically getting mawr toward the actual color of the infrared, allowing the the purples and reds of the original file to exaggerate the sunrise. So playing with infrared just because you can balance out the white balance to kind of neutralize the infrared color cast, there's no reason why you can't, um, mention Also, travel photography. This is in Chicago. I'm actually standing in a parking lot somewhere outside of Chicago and just happened to be a little, you know, Stagnant Creek running by the parking lot. But because of the infrared nature to it, it becomes this little fairy elf land forest situation went in reality there wasn't anything really special about that particular area. Okay, arm or landscapes that's more traditional in terms of our use of the dark skies against things like our, um, pine trees. It's interesting with pines because it's not a decision. Wis Leaf. The chlorophyll in in Evergreen is different, and it doesn't have the same reflective capabilities or same properties of more traditional leaf structure as opposed to a needle. So you do get completely different, feels in a pine forest versus a regularly forced or let's say things like a papaya, you know, so it is nice because it's not just foliage has one nature related to infrared. It's completely variable based upon how much chlorophyll is in the particular implant that you're working on. So again, um, that is also gives it a nice you know, variable nature to it. See down in the Galapagos. Here we've got black turtle, basically dark green, four grounds again, in this case getting the contrast of my subject versus framing it with the light of light foliage. Completely different shot. Then if we chopped that in I'm full color. This is out in front of my house in San Diego place called Swamis Point Swamis. Yes, famous wannabes point so again, taking advantage of the more traditional. This is what you would be considered be a more traditional capture. Also in here I've put a little bit of a glow onto the lights and the image to do it. Make it look a little bit more like a film. Traditional film infrared. You'll notice it has not on Lee the lights to it, but it's glowing that in traditional film, infrared was usually because the film had not been refrigerated. You're supposed to the the film is so sensitive to heat that you had to refrigerate it before and after you shot with it. And, of course, photographers being what we are, oftentimes that's not the case or your you know, your going out in the landscape. You couldn't keep it refrigerated. You weren't putting it on ice, and so it just naturally fogged up. It started to expose based upon the heat of the day or the heat after you shot it, which actually became a feature in the sense of this little haze or glow that's associated with traditional film. I'm infrared and though, so that's what we'll be talking about when we get into processing the image. If you like, that aspect of it, will actually be doing that. You really want to mess with people's minds. You can combine all sorts of different techniques, which I do like. Doing this is creating a impossible shallow depth of field things, so this is more of a photo shop effect. But because the ferial nature of infrared I do like messing with people's minds. So this is I'm using the Blur Gallery within Photoshopped to do some selective blurring and sharpening of the file this actually could be done right inside of light room or adobe camera raw because we have the ability to d sharpen an image using your adjustment brush. And we do have some great autumn asking. So that's just, you know, like I said, messing with people's minds because you can Okay, and let us see some other samples. We may tomorrow. Like I said, we've got an infrared. That one I just love that again is a pocket camera that's straight out of the camera of my daughter doing a leap. You can see how old, how long I've been doing infrared because my daughter now is 17. So this was shut in the olden days before most of you were born in terms of infrared, But, um, just, uh, in a vineyard and her doing her ballet leaps, and I absolutely love it again. Combining are ethereal nature of infrared. In this case, a little bit of motion blur as part of the capture