White Lagoon
Besides having a nice effect on foliage and achieving a long exposure effect at daytime an infrared filter can make a scene look completely different than what it really was. Infrared light is invisible to the eye so what the camera is getting with the infrared filter is something that you can’t imagine or preview thru the viewfinder, sometimes the result is just a disaster, I’d say 80% of the time but from time to time the filter does make a scene interesting.
A Very Cold Summer
In this photo the idea was to turn a hot summer scene into a winter landscape, the lagoon was covered in vegetation and the IR filter made it white so it seems frozen but is only covered in green. The muted colors in the rest of the scene contribute to the winter-effect. Taken at 10:00 am and 38C on a hot summer morning.
The Night at Day
The idea here was to simulate a night shot, the photo was taken at 11am in the morning under a blasting sun. The Infrared filter makes things reddish and if you swap the blue and red channels reddish becomes blueish. Blue hues are usually linked to night scenes so our brain may think this is a night-time photo. The whiteish foliage simulates the effect of moonlight over the scene.
Not an Ocean
In this scene the infrared filter makes the green vegetation red and the brown water blue, this along with the long-exposure effect makes the scene simpler and more beautiful than what it really was. The shot is a panorama made from 9 vertical shots stitched together.
The infrared filter is a nice way to make photos with “bad” light and is also a nice way to see a scene in a different way, you just put the filter and roll the dice to see what the result is. If you have the patience to discard all the failed experiments you can find a nice result here and there.
Photos taken With a Canon T2i, 28mm F2.8 lens and Hoya R72 Infrared filter. Exposure times around 10-30 seconds at ISO 400.
Some of these images are now part of the Fantasy Gallery on my website. A collection of real photos that don’t look real, or something like that…
