At last! A warm and sunny day when I’m free!! While most photographers took shelter from the midday sun, I was out in force; it was an infrared dream.

Infrared photography represents one of the greatest assets of photography; showing us the world in a different way (or should I say light!).  I think that’s why I love it so much.

After sorting out the flat tyres on my neglected bike, I set off.

Road signs come out brilliantly…

 

This shot, taken in Stowe, is two different photos stitched together. The little white blob near the top of the sky is the moon :)

********************************************************************************************************************

Mixing light: post processing experiments

********************************************************************************************************************

I’ve started to take normal photos alongside the infrared ones. It occurred to me that things might start to look interesting if I mix the two different versions together…

Left: normal exposure
Middle: 50/50 mix on Photoshop
Right: infrared exposure

Then I thought it might be even more interesting to change the blending mode of the two layers. My favourite combo was using ‘Hard Light’ at something like 90% (with the normal exposure as the top layer). Here it is!

The sky has taken a lot from the infrared photo, as though I’ve taken it through a polarising filter (though I’m not sure I’ve ever got a polariser to make a sky look that black!), and the grass has become paler. I really like this effect, it’s quite surreal. I imagine you could achieve a similar look without using the infrared photo, however, because the sky really was that dark in the original infrared photo – i.e. without any post-processing at all – the sky retains its full quality, without any of the banding or pixelation that you often see from heavily photoshopped images.

********************************************************************************************************************
Mixes of mixes

********************************************************************************************************************

Okay, so I got a bit carried away. I messed around with the layers and the blend modes and made another scale of infrared-ness!!!

Here goes with the key/explanation:

From left to right:

1st: visible light original
2nd: infrared original (bottom layer), visible light original (top layer), set to Hard Light, 90% [reverse of 5th photo]
3rd: photo 5 (bottom layer), photo 2 (top layer), set to Hard Light, 70%  [reverse of 4th photo]
4th: photo 2 (bottom layer), photo 5 (top layer), set to Pin Light, 70% [reverse of 3rd photo]
5th: visible light original (bottom layer), infrared original (top layer), set to ‘Hard Light, 90% [reverse of 2nd photo]
6th: infrared original

You’ll be relieved to hear that I stopped after this :)