As a photographer, I am constantly curious about exploring the abilities of what can be captured IN camera to expand how a place or moment can be seen. I love the art of creating something real but with a twist. Infrared is the most recent experiment I’ve been dabbling in, and it’s become a bit of an obsession to explore. I’ve barely scratched the surface but these are my findings.
I recently took a converted Nikon d80 (the conversion is actually pretty simple, it’s just a matter of removing the infrared filter that is built into every modern digital camera) down to Baja for a surf trip, and whilst down there, I found out how much fun this camera really is. The most common use for IR is to shoot landscapes, but I loved playing with the technique for surf and travel photography.
Baja is such a perfect canvas for exploring mediums — it’s raw, beautiful and void of human touch for the most part. I learned the most when photographing some cactuses about five hours south of the border.
The toning is the interesting part, it’s up to you whether you choose to keep it in color or convert to black + white. B&W is rad because your common greens get inverted and become a wild white glow. Where generally palm trees or a cactus would be a dark almost silhouette, they become bright white Dr. Seuss-looking creatures in your image.
I also played with a couple different filters. If you want to get a good B+W, I used a red ND, letting in only IR light – great for making super contrasty images of the cactuses. Then I also played with a yellow 12 filter which was great to play with the larger full spectrum of light + IR and created some wild colors. The surf images are with the yellow 12.
Once I returned home, I was so in love with the look and process that I picked up a converted D600 to continue the experiments.
There are also a range of IR films that are worth exploring. I’ve only shot a couple rolls so far, but the purple images are the result of these.
All in all, a fun experiment if you’re into the aesthetic and it’s cool to visually expand your common subject matters.
