Hey everyone,

Amber and Nathan Holritz were talking about using a lot of black and white for their clients. I like the feel it gives too...some very artistic looks.

Does anyone have any experiences with clients regarding infrared? In the right situation, that can give an incredible feel to a picture. I guess this is more a spinoff of that topic rather than a real question about having ShowIT employ some infrared effects.

Thoughts? Resources for good actions or scripts? I don't think Canon sensors pick up the infrared light so it has to be recreated.

Kevin

Funny you ask... I've got a bride who is SUPER amped about me taking some infared shots at their destination beach wedding next month. In fact, it is one of her only requests....(they're super laid-back).

Haven't had much luck with post-production infared so I'm holding onto my old Fuji S1 for a while cz it's not to shabby with a red filter on it for those IR shots:)

Me either. I know Brody Dezember (http://www.dezemberphoto.com/CARTgallery2.htm) will convert a nikon to infrared. Also there is information on the internet how to do it yourself. I purchased a cheap Canon Powershot G1 off the internet for $100 and put a Hoya R72 filter on it and take my infrareds with it. I personally don't care too much for the real infrared photos which are black and white. I prefer to do a little post processing to produce more colorful images. You can check 'em out at:

http://www.pbase.com/jimcook/infrared

Jim's infrareds are UNBELIEVEABLE! I spent hours one night looking through them all and checking out lots of infrared stuff on his blog! They're incredible!

JCook, you have to lay out your secrets to that. That's just too cool.

Now is there a reason there are no people in there? Does it do something funky to the skin tones?

Jim - you've really got that processing dialed in! Those are as good as any color IR film shots I've seen. Nice work!

I don't know about digital IR, but with Kodak IR film skin looks very white and eyes look very black...kind of ghostly, which I'm not sure I'd like for wedding stuff, unless your shots are from a distance and include more scenery.

I think a lot of Nikon Coolpix cameras can "see" infrared light. If you're not sure about your own camera, turn the lights out, open the shutter, point your TV remote at the lens and push buttons like crazy...if the light shows up, you're good to go.

Kevin

Thanks all for the kind words. You all are too nice.

I don't do people because of the ghost like effect on them like Kevin pointed out.

I have been meaning to create a blog entry which describes how to do this in great detail. I will do so soon. But in the meantime here are the basic steps.

(1) Get a cheap older camera which is good letting IR light in. The newer cameras do an excellent job of filtering IR light. I picked up a Canon Powershot G1 on ebay for a little over $100. The G1 is reported to be the best of the powershot series for IR photography. I then purchases a hoya R72 infrared filter, and I also purchases an adapter for the camera so that I could put a filter on it. I think the grand total was something around $175.

(2) Set the white balance by shooting at something green. I normally just shoot the grass.

(3) Take your photos using a tripod. With the R72 filter on in bright daylite, it take about 1/5 second to get an exposure.

(4) The resulting images have a lot of red in them. The sky is red. I prefer blue skies, so I swap the reds and blues in the channel mixer. For the red output channel, I set the red to 0% and the blue to 100%. For the blue output channel, I set red to 100% and blue to 0%.

(5) From there I bump the saturation a bit. If the sky isn't blue enough, I select it and then apply either a gradient fill or most usually a cooling photo filter.

(6) If I want something to stand out, I select it and apply a photo filter to color it.

That is pretty much it. It is pretty insanely easy. So there is my secret.

Great work Jim! I love the look you've created!

I SOOO suck at landscapes like what you've captured. I've tried, and tried again. My eye is too focused on the little details of a scene to take in the whole thing and compose it nicely in the viewfinder. Dunno, maybe I'll try to work on that..