Infrared Photography
Infrared Photography is something my friend Sam introduced me to for the first time around a year ago. It involves blocking the standard spectrum of visible light when a photograph is taken, and only allowing IR light to be captured (near-infrared to be specific instead of far-infrared). Most digital camera’s have IR blockers in them in one way or another, so the camera I used was modified by two friends of mine. The IR blocker was removed, and a few layers of exposed and developed camera film were inserted in place of the IR blocker. (exposed film won’t let visible light pass through.) What makes Infrared photography so unique and attractive has partly to do with the fact that plants absorb and reflect Infrared light in a very different way than they do with visible light.
Broken down just a little more with an example; when light from the sun (or a light bulb) hits my blue t-shirt, all light in the visible spectrum is absorbed by the shirt except blue. The blue part of the light spectrum is reflected, and is the color we end up seeing. Black shirts absorb all colors in the spectrum, and white shirts will reflect all of them (like snow will also do). We can’t see Infrared light, but it still has materials and objects that will reflect or absorb it in a variety of different ways. Foliage (tree leaves and grass) reflect IR light when generally they absorb all light colors but green. A clear blue sky with nothing to absorb or reflect IR light will appear black or very dark, unless it has clouds which don’t absorb IR.
For more information on Infrared Photography and it’s amazing uses, history, and a much more technical explanation of how it all works, Wikipedia has an excellent Infrared Photography article.
Here a few shots from the first batch of IR pictures I took on my lunch break this recent friday.
These Infrared shots were taken at the Scera Park in Orem, UT on June 8th, 2007. The sky was clear blue, the tree’s were green and full, and the grass was just recently cut.
Nice pics. I would however advise you to size these down to post on your front page rather than just setting the width to be smaller. That makes it so that your users don’t have to load 6MBs of photos on front page.
Crappy internet makes people to crazy things.
those pics are rad.
hey bud! i think photography is amazing and you take such wonderful pictures. keep it up! satuday night was a deep infected wound of drama and it’s ongoing. not fun. not fun at all. kisses! amera
Sweet pics. They make those trees look like albinos.
Nice work buddy.
Jon, those are really incredible. I like the last one the best! I didn’t even know that you were into photopraghy, how fun.
[…] Pretty recently I wrote a post about how to do infrared photography, how it works, and why everything looks the way it does. This is another batch of pictures I have taken recently that still include the “outdoor” theme from the first batch. I have gone out and taken pictures of other things, and may post those at a later time. This batch of Infrared Pictures come from Provo Canyon. […]
Infrared photography takes you waaaaay outside the norm, it is a disciplined ‘Art’ and once you have the basics down is a rewarding and sometimes frustrating branch of the photographic arts….but it is deeply addictive!!! Luckily it is not THAT expensive either!! I recently switched to digital and I am going to try and figure out the whys and howtos of digital infrared
Wow great work, you have inspired me to give infrared a try.
these are really good pictures.
im inspired!
Amazing IR. Just have a look at my gallery
could you show a diagram on how you took out the filters and what exatly you did with film and put it where to filter it how to make it infared? I really want to make a digital infared camera but dont want to gut one on your discription alone, need to see what i am up against. Hepl please????