seneth marsden photography: infrared photography

history

Infrared photography or "IR" photography is a type of photos which use "IR" light. As humans, we can't see looking through our normal eyes because, "IR" light isn't in our visible colour spectrum. We can only see it through the lens of a camera. Infrared photography started around the beginning of the 20th century. It was mostly used for movies and sometimes the odd photo. It wasn't until the time of world war II, when "IR" photography became very useful. This is because it shows many different colours between water spots, buildings, plants and people. Now, some groups that use "IR" photography are Firefighters, Contractors, Environmental protection agencies, and the Military. They use it because "IR" photography uses different colours for different things like chemicals, people, vegetation, and heat. therefore they can see what they normally wouldn't be able to see. Also, In the field of medicine, IR photography is very useful as infrared radiation can penetrate the skin. This makes problems such as; varicose veins or venous blood easy to spot. Infrared is also used in dental photography. This is because its shows enamel darker than dentin, which is the material that makes up the bulk of a tooth.

How?

One can achieve infrared photography through many different ways. Film is usually sensitive to visible light too, so using an infrared-passing filter is used. doing this lets infrared light pass through to the camera. However it blocks all or most of the visible light spectrum. Some ways are you can do this are:-buying a circular IR filter that attaches to the front of your camera-having a DLSR camera converted to IR photography use only, buying a camera special for IR photography-using photoshop to create the effect. Every camera uses other ways of capturing IR photos. This means that some are better than others.

ref

My images

infrared tutorial-http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/infrared-photo/

I used the website as a tutorial to achieve an infrared look to the images. First I opened the pictures and adjusted the brightness/contrast, vibrancy and exposure. I wanted the images to start as bright, lively images, then for them to change as I edited them. The tutorial didn’t do this in the beginning or it just didn’t show it. I think it adds the brightness of colours to the end result. Then I saved the picture and opened it again to add the infrared effects. With it open I duplicated the background layer and renamed it to “infrared”. I changed the image to black and white and changed the preset to infrared, then adjusted some of the colours to add some dark and light sections. I converted the image to a smart object and added a filter gallery. This added a diffuse glow and graininess to the pictures. For every image I changed the opacity to 75% on the filter gallery. But for every image I changed the amount of opacity on the black and white layer (ranges from around 60%-90%). Each of my pictures shows some form of landscape in our environment, from down town Gangnam in Seoul, to Sanbanks in Newfoundland and also to our school campus. It is just a way to show how different, yet similar landscapes and nature can be around the world. I chose this theme because it is interesting to me each final image is very different from the next, even though, they were all essentially edited the same.