Calm Photos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve photoraphed using infrared film, and I’m here to say that it’s a first class, pain in the rear. First of all the film must be kept cold up until the time it is used. That can be a bit tricky when shooting in the field or on-location, unless of course it’s in the middle of winter. Next, the film has to be loaded in absolute darkness. Once again, challenging to say the least when out on location. Then the photographer must use a specific type of gelatin filter that can only work with a specific type of filter holder. If the photographer has been successful in following all those steps, the final trick is finding a lab that will process infrared and then shipping the exposed film in tightly controlled conditions.

I went through that process last summer, for a technical assignment that I did for General Dynamics, out at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Because of the nature of that assignment I had to use infrared film and my Canon 1V 35mm film camera.

Now, ask me if I would go through all of that if I wanted to do infrared photography for my own nature and landscape photographs. No, I don’t think so.

Instead I will take the easier road to infrared images by way of Photoshop CS. First of all, I can use any original, full color digital capture and apply the effect withough altering the original file. There’s no “absolute and total darkness” or special filters involved.

I recently learned of this technique in digital alteration when I picked-up the latest edition of Photoshop User magazine, while browsing a Barnes and Noble in Denver last week. On pages 72-73 of the January/February 2006 issue is a section called the WOW! Factor, with a chosen excerpt from the book of the same title, by Jack Davis and Ben Willmore.

Rather than explain the technique verbatim, I encourage anyone who would like to learn this cool technique of applying a infrared look to digital images to pick-up a copy of the magazine at your local newstand. The price is $9.95. It’s well worth the investment. There’s lot of other cool PS techniques explained in the magazine, however, I found the infrared article the most interesting. It’s also relatively easy to learn, even if you are somewhat new to Photoshop. The hardest part is simply understanding how layers work in this program.

Posted above is an example I did just by following the step-by-step instructions in the article. The original image is a full-color, 6×7 Velvia transparency. I used a high-resolution, digital scan of the image and turned this Hocking Hills scene into a photograph that looks like it was taken with infrared film, but without the hassle.