Shooting in Infrared - Part 2 of 3: Taking the Shot
Blue Hen Falls - Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio. 720nm image
This is the second of three articles regarding Infrared Photography. For this portion we’ll focus on taking the image, while the next article will focus on post-processing.
First, lets discuss what scenarios are possibly good for IR images, and which ones aren’t so good.
The good:
ARCHITECTURE
Architecture makes for a great subject when shooting in IR. Especially in B&W imagery. Why? Because with IR light, structure details tend to pop and its easy to make skies go to black or show drama, even in bright daylight hours. Also, because IR doesn’t really show pigments the same way the human eye sees them, its often less about the color and more about the details.
LANDSCAPES/WOODS/TREES
This one is a bit obvious, given my comments about the origin of IR in the first article. IR light really bounces off leaves, grass, anything living or green for that matter. It can turn a somewhat “blah” woodland scene into something dramatic.
WHEN THERE IS NEED FOR SEPARATION
This one is not so obvious but it makes an IR camera a valuable tool to have with you in your toolbox. In some scenarios the subject is in front of or surrounded by a lot of trees or overgrowth, and may practically disappear or be hard to separate in the scene.
The not-so good:
LOW LIGHT
Just like regular photography, you need good light with IR. The more the better. In dim light, there isn’t a lot of IR light bouncing off things so the scene doesn’t benefit from it. At that point you are almost better off shooting a normal camara.
CLOTHING
Pigments, dyes, and materials all reflect IR light differently and often don’t appear anywhere close to what they look like with the naked eye. An all-black outfit may look white, yellow, or even somewhat transparent in IR light depending on the material and pigments. There are photographers who make a living shooting portraits and wedding images in IR, but if you decide to give it a try, be certain you’ve informed your clients their outfits will look different. A side-benefit is that IR does tend to smooth out skin tones and blemishes/freckles, and give a “soft” glowing look to many skin types.
This was shot in low light with incoming rain. Note the lack of “pop” in the trees - and - the clothing on the people. They were dressed in all-black for a wedding.
SUN FLARE
Sun flare is your enemy in IR photography. Or maybe not if you like that sort of thing. Flare when pointed at the sun can be rather intense and polarizing (no pun intended) in IR. As with anything photography related, its worth experimenting with. I personally am not a fan.
If sun flare is your jam, then just point your IR camera anywhere near the sun and you’ll get plenty of it!
AS A CRUTCH
There are a lot of IR images out there that are just bad. And not because they didn’t know how to expose correctly or edit the images. Its because IR was used as a crutch to prop-up an otherwise crappy image. Yes, IR does often turn ordinary scenes into something unique or different, but if the composition, subject, etc was just bad to begin with, no amount of crazy colors or glowing flora is going to save it.
OK, now that we’ve chatted a bit about what to point your camera at, lets discuss how to take a shot. You’ve got your IR camera set up with the correct white-balance, and your photo editing software is ready for you to come home with some images to edit.
Below is a local monument that’s probably one of the most photographed areas in Dayton, Ohio. I went there yesterday to take some shots for this tutorial because it was perfect to use as an example – trees, grass, a main subject, and a lot of sky. The bonus was the great clouds. Here is what the scene looked like to the naked eye.
Carillon Park Bell Tower - on a sunny August afternoon in Ohio
It was a sunny day, so for those of you who know the “Sunny 16” rule, a good guess for proper exposure would be ISO 100, 1/100th of a second, at f/16. And that’s a pretty good guess, based on what the light meter reading was.
No surprise, the Sekonic matched pretty close with the “Sunny 16” rule.
I tend to shoot IR images in manual mode, knowing what a good starting point is on a sunny day and modifying it from that. But for this exercise, let’s go off the light meter to replicate what you might get if you shoot in “A” or Aperture Priority mode. Remember these images are the B&W jpegs that you’d see on the back of the camera – the images that we will import will be raw, red IR images to do final edits.
As you can see, this shot is under-exposed. The histogram is crammed to the left, and the image looks very “blah” and dark. Let’s add about 1 stop of light and shoot it again.
OK, getting better but not there yet. Still a little dark, although the histogram is looking much better. Let’s add another stop of light.
So this is much better. No black and white points are clipped, the exposure looks much better, and is a good base to edit from. Note that this was a sunny day and I had to add 2 whole stops to get a good exposure versus what the camera or light meter might think.
That said, there are 3 different ways to shoot. You can shoot in manual mode like I do and adjust the shutter speed or f/stop to dial in your histogram. You could also shoot in “A” mode and then use the exposure compensation dial to dial in the exposure. Or, if shooting with a mirrorless camera, you can shoot in live-view and adjust the exposure based on what you are seeing on the back. All three are valid ways to capture the image, so its up to you as to what you are comfortable with.
I know that was a lot to cover. Once you get the process down and shoot a bit in IR, things will be more intuitive for you. You’ll also want to experiment a lot with different subjects, scenes, etc to find what works for you or what you like.
Next we will import the image I shot above into the computer and do some edits in Lightroom and Photoshop.
Stay tuned!
Jeremy
