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Month: December 2016

some eerie pics from my first walk with an infra-red-converted nikon d40.

bought pre-converted from a european artist who works in i-r. i know the camera model well and it was offered at less than i’ve seen for conversion services alone.

there’s a certain amount of post processing going on here. some cameras allow a custom white-balance to be set, if i understand right that gives you immediate feedback on replay. this doesn’t – the images are *very* red and require white balance, levels and channel switching tweaks.

this type of photography runs the risk of being discounted as “just another photoshop filter” – or selective colour effects – but it’s actually recording a different spectrum of light to that visible with the naked eye.

digital camera sensors are particularly sensitive to infrared, and are made with a filter to block that light in preference to the visible spectrum. conversions remove this filter and replace it with one of a number of different alternative filters.

the camera was supplied with excellent advice on hard- and soft-ware settings and i enjoy the reveal of applying these filters step by step, suddenly realising a could-go-either-way image suddenly shines in i-r B)

i process every picture on the same settings – some come out noticeably blue throughout, while others have distracting orange tones. i have discretion like a darkroom processor printing an enlargement, in terms of which tones – warm or cool – that i choose for the finished picture. otherwise, images are as they come out of the camera.

what was to be a larger/more strictly edited series has been cut short by my camera giving out on me. unless i replace the 10-year-old digital body with one of equal decrepitude second-hand i have no way to maintain the point of view i was exploring, so these 14 images are cut adrift, interrupted. which i guess is apt.

in the wake of two close bereavements i found myself adrift, chasing a glimmer of light that seemed to show the only way forward. my world cramped and confined by anxiety and isolation, i tried to capture every flash of that light when and where i momentarily found it. i nearly blinded myself looking for its source in the sun but was left with cast highlights and shadows, apparitions, hints of a life beyond my four walls.