Infrared Clouds

Clouds in infrared
Infrared Clouds
Every so often I'll look out my window and see a shot that works for X kind of processing or method, or kind. When I shot this a couple weeks ago I looked out my window and saw great big white clouds with a deep blue sky backdrop that I knew would work for some dramatic looks if shot in infrared. And I wasn't disappointed. Take a look at the RAW color, the in camera B&W conversion, and a quick HDR'd version and see for yourself:

Aperture Screenshot
RAW, In-camer B&W, and HDR'd
In each of the "natural light" versions above the clouds look flat and listless, nothing how I remember seeing them. It was almost as if the clouds overwhelmed the camera sensor. Looking over the shots from that day I remember being disappointed when I ran across the color RAWs and camera B&Ws  and was preparing for more disappointment when I got to the shots with the IR filter on. I like to try and take a number of shots in the natural light before putting the IR filter on just because it's annoying to screw on and off the filter. Lazy? Yes.

When I got to the orangish/reddish IR shots I knew I had something. I have given up on faux color IR conversions at this point with the 720nm filter, as I find the shots just not rich enough in color to make them interesting to view, but with a little work this filter and black & white work really well together. A little work in Black & White Effects and I got an image that I was really happy with.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Manzanar

Image
If you find yourself in the Eastern Sierra, I highly highly recommend taking a few hours and stopping by the Manzanar National Historic Site. It's tells the story of out not too distant past that we like to conveniently skip over. If you're not familiar with the significance of this site, this is where, shortly after the bombing of Hawaii by Japan in 1941, some 10,000 Japanese, most with US citizenship, were incarcerated. This site is one of ten sites around the country that would come to hold over 110,000 people, again most of which were US citizens, from 1942-1945.
Read more

Spring Has Sprung

Image
I realize it's been awhile since posting, but here goes. I have a backlog of photos taken with some new gear (more on that in another post. Hopefully) so I'm going to post some that have only seen minimal processing within the Google Photos service? App? All in all I'm really impressed with how much Google Photos has progressed over the years. Until I get Lightroom setup on a new computer, Google, and a handful of other apps, will have to handle the workload.
Read more

Panoramas From the Road

Image
Before we get into the meat of this post, if you're viewing this on a mobile device, these photos really don't translate that well on it. These are large panoramic photos and really need a large screen to do them justice. Now on with the post.

Occasionally during my Eastern Sierra trip I had the idea to take panoramas to try and take in the full view of what I was seeing and feeling. I tried to focus on a part of the view I was seeing that would fill up my frame, but I felt that it didn't full get the whole feeling with only part of the view, but this led to other problems. All the panoramas I took were literally on the side of the road, meaning I was in the middle of driving, with someone who's not a photographer. So, not wanting to annoy them I left the tripod in the car and took these panoramas free hand. When taking handheld panos my general rule is to take many photos and to go well beyond and after my intended start and stop points so that the photo software has …
Read more