Infrared Photography

Ever since I saw my first Infrared, or ‘IR’ photograph I have been captured by the surreal look of the images. We recently had a spare camera converted over to do Infrared photography by Life Pixel which will allow us to explore a new world – the world of the unseen. Infrared refers to the spectrum of light just beyond the range humans can detect with their eyesight so you cannot directly see it but the camera can.

Digital cameras are inherently sensitive to Infrared light but Infrared light will mess with the auto focus mechanism in the camera so manufacturers will put a glass filter right over the CCD in the camera to filter out this light. In my case I wanted that light and wanted to filter out all the rest.  Companies such as Life Pixel will for a fee convert your camera to being able to see only in the Infrared spectrum of light. What they do is take the camera apart and replace the IR blocking filter with a IR pass through filter.

Infrared filters come in different type to allow different wave lengths of light through. The wave lengths are measure in nano-meters (nm) and examples of them can be found on the Life Pixel web site. i went with the Standard IR Filter and the results are beyond my expectation.

Infrared photographs are not worked in post production the same as regular photographs. Depending on the effect you want in your picture you have multiple different techniques you can employ to work them. There are many tutorials on the web for working Infrared Pictures. I followed the basic tutorials on the Life Pixel web site to start with and then branched out into others. You have a lot of creativity you can use with Infrared images so play and have fun. Below are a few samples of some of my first pictures with the “new” camera.

We hope you enjoy these pictures. They were fun to work on!