How-to: Boston Common in Infrared

It’s time for a new technique review. This time I want to show you some infrared shots. It is fascinating to imagine, that we only see a very restricted wave-length of light. If we would see more, we could maybe see sound, radio waves or warming waves.

On way to discover a new world is infrared photography. Theses are photo that are made out of light that we can not see. Fascinating and in someway surreal. The photos looks like winter, but they have been captured in the middle of the summer.

I used here a infrared filter in front of the lens. I used a Hoya R72 filter that only let infrared light into the lens. Because most digital camera sensors filter infrared light out, you need to make a pretty long exposure (ca. 10 sec). Another problem is that you can not compose the photo, because the view finder is pitch black. But you can compose the shot before adapting a filter afterwards.

Boston Common in HDR infrared

This is my first attempt to combine infrared pictures with HDR.

My experience with this is mixed.
– the IF pictures have a reduced color specturm. Thus, HDR has not so much to play with
– IF photos can have some weird color effects. This gets really hard to handle in the HDR process
– IF needs ca. 10sec per exposure. The HDR needs this three times. Thus, movement of clouds and leaves cannot be prevent.

In total, I like the result above. Although I must confess, that not everything was under my control. The blurry edges are from the inferior equipment I used (I needed to take the IF filter between two lenses). Although I didn’t had the color completely under control 😉

Here some further shots in infrared. Hope you like it.

Werner

A different World in Infrared (Boston/Cambridge)

A new view on Boston in Infrared

In a new World