Blooming Almonds Infrared

by Mike Lee

Title

Blooming Almonds Infrared

Artist

Mike Lee

Medium

Photograph - Digital Photography

Description

When I had a full spectrum modification done to an old camera I ordered two filters with it. I got the 830 nanometer filter which only allows near infrared light to pass (the visible light part of the electromagnetic spectrum ends somewhere in the mid 700 nanometer range). I use this filter for deep contrasty black and white imagery. I also ordered a 590nm filter. This filter blocks some of the yellows and everything lower in the spectrum (no blues, greens, purples, etc). It allows some yellows, oranges and reds along with the full infrared part of the spectrum. This facilitates the creation of some rather surreal artistic “false color” imagery. It also requires a fair bit more on the post production side of things and therefore has a longer learning curve than the pure IR black and white which is fairly straight forward. This is the first image from that filter that I find worthy of sharing. I still have some learning/practicing to do as of this posting but I feel like I’m figuring some of it out. By swapping the red and blue channels in post production, along with a few other techniques you can bring back blue to the sky (even though absolutely zero blue color was captured in camera). Greens end up ranging from yellow to almost white adding a bit of warmth to the overall look.


I grabbed this image of an almond orchard alongside Interstate 5 in the vicinity of Artois California while traveling through the area on an early March day. The entire time I drove down that highway I was back and forth between sun and rain and caught this orchard when some good sun broke through, which helps infrared photography greatly

Uploaded

March 8th, 2023

Colors

Embed

Share

Tags