How to Transform Your Travel Photography? Take a Photo Workshop

There are many different types of photographic workshops to choose from; the Santa Fe Photographic Workshop has a good reputation and an impressive roster of teachers. (Photo: Susan Portnoy/The Insatiable Traveler)

By Susan Portnoy

One of the best ways to improve your travel photography is to take a workshop with a pro photographer. But workshops cost money, require commitment and only succeed if you're serious about learning.

Is a photo workshop right for you? Here are a few things to consider.

What is a photographic workshop?

There are many different types of photographic workshops. The majority are taught by professionals (if they're not, don't take it), and in some cases by renowned photographers whose work you might find in magazines, galleries or museums. Classes can focus on specific genres of photography (wildlife, travel, landscape, or fashion etc.), while others might concentrate on individual techniques (how to light, infrared photography, how to work with models, Instagram, iPhonography), or post-production (classes on Lightroom, Photoshop, or printing). Some workshops include travel with a photogenic destination as the backdrop for inspiration and instruction.

A student photographs Thomas, one of our models, during the "Visions of the American West" workshop. (Photo: Susan Portnoy/The Insatiable Traveler)

Grant, another model and his two horses, Colt and Silver gallop across the plains during a workshop. (Photo: Susan Portnoy/The Insatiable Traveler)

Colt and Silver, resting between takes. (Photo: Susan Portnoy/The Insatiable Traveler)

Timing can range from a single afternoon to a week or more depending on the school, instructor and the type of class you choose.

Price is dependent on a range of variables: the length of the workshop and its location; the celebrity of the photographer teaching; if specialized equipment is needed or if models are used. The good news: there's a broad range of options to choose from.

Related: Photos You Wish You'd Taken of the Perseid Meteor Shower

My portrait of another model Thomas. (Photo: Susan Portnoy/The Insatiable Traveler)

The difference between a photography workshop and a photography tour/safari.

In both cases, improving your photography is on the menu and the program includes a well-known guest photographer. However, photography tours tend to be more casual in nature and the instruction isn't as immersive. More emphasis is placed on experiencing and photographing bucket-list locations than intensive photographic instruction that will challenge your photographic skills. Tours rarely, if ever, dispense assignments and group critiques, and discussions are rare. In some cases you'll have the opportunity to sit with the lead photographer to discuss your work privately, but it isn't a given. If you want that kind of attention be sure to ask if that's available before you book. On the average, instruction and assistance is on the go.

Related: 15 Travel Photos That Will Make You Want to Hit the Road Now

What to expect

Workshops are meant to provide you with high-quality instruction in a relatively short period of time. Groups are usually small, ranging from 10 to 15 people. The tenor of a class is dependent on the instructor, their area of expertise and whether you'll be shooting in the field or remaining in the classroom. There's no "standard" but elements they often share include:

Bringing your own camera and lenses. In some cases, workshops may have equipment you can rent.  If the class has special requirements that equipment is often provided

An assumption that you have a working knowledge of your camera and its settings unless your class is introductory. (Always have your manual handy just in case)

Assignments and private and/or group critiques of your work

Total immersion in photography. It can be an all day and into the night depending on the subject of the class.

One-on-one coaching from the pro photographer leading the workshop (this will vary by the class and the instructor)

A teaching assistant if the class is on the larger

Breaks for meals (in some cases meals are provided)

You'll learn A LOT

A photo I took of a doorway at Chimayo, a Roman Catholic church, during an assignment on composition in Santa Fe. (Photo: Susan Portnoy/The Insatiable Traveler)

My favorite photo of Thomas. (Photo: Susan Portnoy/The Insatiable Traveler)

Related: Photographers Name the Most Picturesque Streets in the World

How to find a workshop

Two organizations rise to the top in terms of reputation and prestige and boast an impressive roster of guest instructors. They are the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops in New Mexico and the Maine Media Workshops + College in Rockport. These institutions attract students from around the world and offer a wide array of classes for all skill levels (a few advanced classes may require a portfolio review). Both offer lodging and meal plans for week-long sessions. The Maine Media workshops are closed from November thru January. Santa Fe is open year-round but it's best known for its spring and summer sessions.

If you're in New York City, the International Center of Photography is a great resource for courses and workshops as part of its Continuing Education program. Classes range from one-day and weekend sessions to longer programs that meet over a period of weeks. There are plenty of classes to choose from and they run all year.

Many famous photographers across a variety of genres from street photography to travel and everything in-between, conduct workshops of their own once or twice a year. Check out their personal and professional websites for details, but hurry, the big guys sell out fast.

Another great place to check for workshops is your local camera shop. If the store doesn't offer its own classes the staff may be able to point you in the right direction.

Google "Photography Workshops in [name of your city]," but make sure to do some research before enrolling. Ask your friends, check Yelp and other review sites to assess the quality of the programs and make sure to look at the lead photographer's website portfolio before you confirm. No use learning from someone whose images don't impress.

Note: I was recently a guest of the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops but opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

More from The Insatiable Traveler

Five Essential Lessons (and One Great Tip) I learned about Photography at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops

Picture Perfect Namibia: Embracing the Silhouette

Rediscovering New York: Times Square – The Good, The Bad and The Ewww

Six Photography Tips I Learned From A Wildlife Photographer You Can Use Anytime, Anywhere

Six Things To Consider When Booking A Photography Tour

WATCH: The Famously Beautiful Fjords and Eerie Ghost Towns of Greenland

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Source: How to Transform Your Travel Photography? Take a Photo Workshop

Woman's trip to France inspires show at Main Exhibit Gallery

Local artist Alexis Dillon will feature a photography show, "A Tour de France," and "The Red Chair" at Main Exhibit Gallery beginning Friday.

Depicting images from a recent trip to the village of Ambialet, France, the exhibition will begin with an opening reception slated for 6 to 8 p.m.

"While there, I was drawn to a red chair located in one of the rooms of the Franciscan monastery," Dillon said. "At first I just liked how the complimentary color made the greens of the landscape pop. Later I began to read into the chair's moods as I carried it from place to place. Was it disinterested when its back was turned? Was it enthusiastic when placed on an overlook? I had a lot of fun as I lugged the chair in the July heat. When I returned home, I made a book of my red chair in all its locations. Since I couldn't bring the real chair home, I had a model made that is similar to the original which will be included in the show."

Refreshments with a French theme will be served at the reception and guests are invited to interact with the "Red Chair" exhibit, which will be in the upstairs gallery, a more intimate space, according to Mandy Sirofchuck, owner of Main Exhibit Gallery.

"The red chair photos will be featured with a red chair and a beret, inviting visitors to pose with the chair and take selfies," Sirofchuck said.

When Dillon mentioned the trip to Ambialet, France to her, Sirofchuck said she thought it would be a good idea to put together a show specific to her trip.

"Main Exhibit is such a great facility to showcase art," said Dillon, a resident of Greensburg. "It's such a beautiful place and Mandy and Paul are great people."

The show will contain over 60 pieces that have not yet been released to the public.

The images are from Dillon's visit to the Franciscan monastery, owned by St. Francis College.

"The relationship between my photo images and the viewer is an extremely personal one," Dillon said. "Although primarily void of human subjects, the mood of my work is expectant and joyful; images waiting for a human response."

"A Tour de France" and "The Red Chair" will run at Main Exhibit Gallery through Sept. 20.

"Whenever I see Alexis's work, I'm always impressed by it," Sirofchuck said. "We've known her for almost 20 years; she was one of the first artists we had in our gallery when we opened."

A graduate of Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a degree in visual arts and photography instruction, Dillon is a member of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Society of Artists and the Silver Eye Center of photography.

She taught art and photography at Hempfield Area Senior High School for 25 years and now is concentrating on her own work.

"It is my vocation to share with the viewer, in the time allowed, that glimpse of something more which is often forgotten in the daily battle with minutiae," Dillion said. "I never feel more connected than when I'm involved with my images be it shooting, printing or applying colors."

Sirofchuck said she is amazed by the work that Dillon does.

"She works with infrared prints that she hand colors," she said. "She also does something called manipulated Polaroid, where she moves the emulsion around on the Polaroids before it sets and the prints look like paintings.

Aside from altering photos, Sirofchuck said she feels Dillon has a great eye for setting up her shots.

"She knows how to work with light and mood, creating her art on site with the camera without alterations later on," said Sirofchuck.

Dillon said the ethereal qualities of infrared film best express the lyrical nature of her vision.

"The techniques and idiosyncrasies of infrared photography have become a comfortable tool for me, allowing my imagination and aesthetics to dominate the vision I 'see' with my camera," she said. "Whether it is a film camera, infrared digital, or a Polaroid manipulation, I use whatever fits my concept."

Cami DiBattista is a contributing writer for Trib Total Media.

Source: Woman's trip to France inspires show at Main Exhibit Gallery

Did Jesus have a wife?

In September 2012, at the International Congress of Coptic Studies meeting in Rome, the discovery of a tiny papyrus fragment that contained the phrase "Jesus said to them, 'My wife'..." was announced to the world by Karen L. King, a professor at Harvard Divinity School.

Her work soon appeared in the media and on the internet and it was subsequently widely discussed and debated by scholars around the world. The text – which is only a fragment of the original – is purported to be a fourth-century translation of an earlier Greek text dating from the mid-second century. From the outset, however, King has insisted that the fragment "should not be taken as proof that Jesus, the historical person, was actually married."

She noted that even as a translation of a second-century Greek text, the original – now lost – would still have been written more than 100 years after the death of Jesus. According to King, the earliest and most reliable information about Jesus is silent on the question of his marital status. But she insists that this text provides the "first evidence that at least some early Christians believed Jesus had been married." She postulates the date of the hypothetical original – from which this fragment was copied – to the second half of the second century because it shows close connections to other recently discovered gospels written at that time, especially the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Philip. The fragment is very small and is rectangular in shape. It measures approximately 1.6 x 3.1 inches – about the size of a business card. The fragment has eight incomplete lines of writing on the obverse and is badly damaged on the reverse, with only t hree faded words and a few letters that are only visible when examined with infrared photography and computer-aided enhancement. Because this fragment contains writing on both sides, Professor King suggests that it was originally a part of a codex, a bound book, and not a scroll.

She also notes that the fragment is written in Coptic – a language that was in use 1600 years ago. On the reverse only faint traces of letters remain. The ink has literally been worn away. This suggests that the writing is in fact ancient. What does this tiny fragment actually say? There are eight lines of text. Each one is incomplete. Lines 4 and 5 are the most interesting.

1 not to me. My mother gave to me life 2 The disciples said to Jesus, 3 deny. Mary is not worthy of it 4 Jesus said to them, "My wife 5 she is able to be my disciple 6 Let wicked people swell up 7 As for me, I am with her in order to 8 an image So what are the possibilities for assessing the significance of this document?

Essentially there are but two: (1) it is a clever forgery or (2) it is genuine and ancient. An analysis published by American researchers in April 2014, that relied upon carbon-14 dating technology, concluded that the fragment is ancient and dates somewhere between the sixth and ninth centuries – somewhat later than Professor King initially suggested, but, nonetheless ancient.

A further test performed by researchers at Harvard University in conjunction with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute produced a date of origin for the papyrus fragment between 659 to 859 CE. Other tests using FT-IR microspectroscopy at MIT examined the homogeneous chemical composition of the papyrus together with its patterns of oxidation. This research also confirmed its antiquity.

Researchers at the Center for Integrated Science and Engineering, Columbia University, used a technique called micro-Raman spectroscopy and determined that the carbon character of the ink matched samples of other papyri known to have originated from the first to eighth centuries CE. Yet on the other hand, a Vatican newspaper has declared this fragment to be a "very modern forgery." The newspaper claims that a number of independent scholars have provided evidence demonstrating that this papyrus includes typographical errors that are identical to those made on a particular modern-day online translation service provided for ancient texts.

Craig Evans of the Acadia Divinity College, suggested the "oddly written letters" are "probably modern." Others have noted that the handwriting, grammar, shape of the papyrus, and the ink's color and quality are all suspect.

Professor Francis Watson of Durham University published a paper on the papyrus fragment suggesting the text was a "patchwork of texts" from the Gospel of Thomas which had been "copied and reassembled out of order." So the jury is still out of the question of the fragment's antiquity although many, if not most interpreters – but by no means all – are nonetheless satisfied, based on pure science, that the fragment is indeed ancient. So the question then becomes what does it tell us? What could be the reason(s) that someone would make this assertion? On a televised documentary broadcast in 2012 Professor King said: "The question on many people's minds is whether this fragment should lead us to re-think whether Jesus was married. I think however, what it leads us to do, is not to answer that question one way or the other, [but it] leads us to re-think how Christianity understood sexuality and marriage in a very positive way, and to recapture the pleasures of sexualit y, the joyfulness and the beauties of human intimate relations." Professor Ben Witherington of Asbury Theological Seminary has suggested flatly that this fragment should not be considered a "game-changer" for those studying the historical Jesus. He notes that during the rise of the monastic movement in the early Christian centuries it was common for people who were monks or evangelists to travel in the company of a "sister-wife."

Applied here, this phenomenon could render the term "wife" open to interpretations that would include non-literal ones, e.g., a context in which the reference, if valid, may not have been to a literal wife at all. So some scholars regard the fragment as being of a historical interest, rather than a faith interest. The modern notion that Jesus was married is largely attributable to the tradition about the Holy Grail which held that Jesus had been married to Mary Magdalene. On the basis of that supposed marriage, legends grew about the Holy Grail and culminated in various myths about a surviving bloodline in Europe. The theory became widely known after the publication of "The Da Vinci Code," a best-selling 2003 novel written by Dan Brown.

Professor King is quick to reject any link between her work and The Da Vinci Code, telling the New York Times that she "wants nothing to do with the code or its author: 'At least, don't say this proves Dan Brown was right'." But it does seem reasonable to conclude that this text may well suggest at least some Christian – however few – in the early centuries of the faith accepted the tradition that Jesus was married. And they may have done so for reasons relating to clarifying the role of women in Christianity. In this regard, the fragment also includes the line, "she is able to be my disciple." The New York Times article notes that scholars trace the debates over "whether Jesus was married, whether Mary Magdalene was his wife and whether he had female disciples to the early centuries of Christianity." For the most part, the texts and narratives that support the notion of female discipleship are found outside the Bible. This reality does not come as a great su rprise to modern interpreters because the canonical New Testament was assembled many decades after Jesus's death by an emerging church dominated by males.

Today the mere study of the ancient texts not included in the Bible is often associated with liberal bias because in at least some instances these texts bring into focus the marginalized voices of women.

Professor King's research has been in the area of non-canonical writings, and thus she was drawn to this particular papyrus fragment from the outset. Unlike the sensational media interests that focus only upon Jesus' marital status, her interests were less in its late and unreliable mention of Jesus' wife and more in its support of the emerging role of women in the church.

Thus this tiny fragment is useful because the conversation it recorded constitutes a fine – however minor – contribution to the history of early Christian thought. Indeed, it would be yet another piece of evidence that the first few centuries of Christianity were not nearly so unified in belief and practice as conventional narratives tend to suggest, but rather that its viewpoints about inclusiveness were still evolving.

•••

MILLS IS BIBLE SCHOLAR

Dr. Watson E. Mills is a noted Bible scholar and author.

He is professor (emeritus) of New Testament studies at Mercer University and pastor (emeritus) of Sharpsburg Baptist Church.

Mills has written and published extensively on biblical texts. He edited "Mercer Commentary on the Bible," "Mercer Commentary on the Old Testament: Including the Deuterocanonical Literature," "Mercer Commentary on the New Testament" and "Mercer Dictionary of the Bible." 

Source: Did Jesus have a wife?

New NASA Photo Shows Saturn In A Whole New Light

The ancient Romans saw Saturn as the god of agriculture and fertility, a generally benevolent and peaceful deity. Saturn's sometime partner, Lua, on the other hand, brought illness to Roman enemies and oversaw the destruction of their weapons.

In this image published on Monday, NASA seems to have captured two parts Lua and one part Saturn with the mix of shadows and light.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured the photo, titled "Darkness Descending," in May of this year, using a wide-angle lens and an infrared filter at a distance of about 930,000 miles from the planet's surface.

Per a release from the space agency, this particular infrared filter helps scientists locate methane on the planet, which is useful in determining the dynamics of Saturn's atmosphere:

Methane is not a major component of Saturn's atmosphere, but enough of it is present to make a difference in how much light is reflected by different clouds. The darker areas reveal clouds that are lower in the atmosphere, therefore under more methane. Bright areas on Saturn are higher altitude clouds. Scientists think that these lower-altitude clouds are in regions where "air" is descending while the higher-altitude clouds are in regions where air is rising. Thus, images like this one can help us map the vertical air movements on Saturn.

NASA also released a near-infrared photo of the planet last week (see below), in which two of the planet's moons, Dione (left) and Mimas (right), straddle Saturn's rings brightly in the foreground, while Saturn looms ominously behind:

While Saturn is the second-largest planet in the solar system, it appears particularly large in the above photo as Dione has a diameter of only 698 miles and Mimas' is just 246 miles. For comparison, Earth is just over 7,900 miles in diameter while Saturn stretches 75,400 miles.

Also on HuffPost:

Source: New NASA Photo Shows Saturn In A Whole New Light

A year after Mike Brown's death, here's what mainstream media missed

ATLANTA, Aug. 13, 2015 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- While the racial optics surrounding the murder of Mike Brown and protests in Ferguson, Mo. have been magnified in the media, two photojournalists are looking at the story through the lens of a camera that renders your skin color invisible.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150813/258143

Challenging the perception ofracewith theirWorld In Infrared project, Steven Saphore & Nilesh Pawar documented Atlanta's turbulent backlash to Mike Brown's murder using infrared-sensitive DSLR's. The DIY technology offers a glimpse into the spectrum of infrared light in which an ethnically diverse array of fervent demonstratorsaredepicted with no discernable difference in their pigmentation.

"As melanin developed in the human body as a natural barrier to protect us from harmful rays of ultraviolet light, it comes as little surprise that infrared light is able to pass through the skin coloring pigment unimpeded as if it were made of glass" - Steven Saphore

The myriad of eyewitnesses, cameras and notepads found at the front lines of this nationwide movement reported the incident on the basis of racial discrimination. This limited perception stems from a major flaw of humanity that even the most objective of journalism cannot escape:Your eye is a tool; Every tool has limitations.

"Up to the Twentieth Century, 'reality' was everything humans could touch, smell, see, and hear. Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality." - R. Buckminster Fuller on Education (University of Massachusetts Press, 1979), p. 130

Visible light is nothing more than a term used to describe the mere 0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum that is perceivable to the human eye. With a special filter, some simple tools and a penchant for dismantling electronics, Steven & Nilesh hack cameras to 'see' beyond the limits of human vision and into the surreal spectrum ofinfrared light.

To experience this issue in a new light, view the entire gallery onwww.worldininfrared.com/portfolio/skin-color-is-a-pigment-of-your-imaginationand decide for yourself whether race is a genetic or social construct.

About World In Infrared:

World In Infrared is an international art/science/humanities project pioneering the unprecedented use of infrared photography in the field of photojournalism. Founded by Steven Saphore & Nilesh Pawar in 2012, they are dedicated to developing new tools to explore the world with. For more information, please visitwww.WorldInInfrared.comorFacebook.com/WorldInInfrared.

Logo:

www.worldininfrared.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/World-In-Infrared-Label-80.png&www.worldininfrared.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/World-In-Infrared-Glyph-Logo-High-Res.png

Media Contact: Steven Saphore, World In Infrared, +1 (404) 421-9263, info@worldininfrared.com

News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com

SOURCE World In Infrared

Copyright 2014 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved

Source: A year after Mike Brown's death, here's what mainstream media missed

New NASA Photo Shows Saturn In A Whole New Light

The ancient Romans saw Saturn as the god of agriculture and fertility, a generally benevolent and peaceful deity. Saturn's sometime partner, Lua, on the other hand, brought illness to Roman enemies and oversaw the destruction of their weapons.

In this image published on Monday, NASA seems to have captured two parts Lua and one part Saturn with the mix of shadows and light.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured the photo, titled "Darkness Descending," in May of this year, using a wide-angle lens and an infrared filter at a distance of about 930,000 miles from the planet's surface.

Per a release from the space agency, this particular infrared filter helps scientists locate methane on the planet, which is useful in determining the dynamics of Saturn's atmosphere:

Methane is not a major component of Saturn's atmosphere, but enough of it is present to make a difference in how much light is reflected by different clouds. The darker areas reveal clouds that are lower in the atmosphere, therefore under more methane. Bright areas on Saturn are higher altitude clouds. Scientists think that these lower-altitude clouds are in regions where "air" is descending while the higher-altitude clouds are in regions where air is rising. Thus, images like this one can help us map the vertical air movements on Saturn.

NASA also released a near-infrared photo of the planet last week (see below), in which two of the planet's moons, Dione (left) and Mimas (right), straddle Saturn's rings brightly in the foreground, while Saturn looms ominously behind:

While Saturn is the second-largest planet in the solar system, it appears particularly large in the above photo as Dione has a diameter of only 698 miles and Mimas' is just 246 miles. For comparison, Earth is just over 7,900 miles in diameter while Saturn stretches 75,400 miles.

Also on HuffPost:

Source: New NASA Photo Shows Saturn In A Whole New Light

No, this isn't a moody painting of Saturn. It's a photo.

What's This?

An image of Saturn taken by the Cassini spacecraft with an infrared filter.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

By Miriam Kramer2015-08-11 20:57:21 UTC

A new photo taken by a satellite exploring Saturn and its many moons shows the ringed planet seemingly wrapped in a moody looking haze that actually looks more like art and less like science.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft snapped this image in May using an infrared filter, giving the photo its distinct, spooky glow, the space agency said.

"Infrared images can help scientists determine the location of clouds in the planet's atmosphere," NASA said in a statement.

In particular, this image can give scientists a sense of methane's presence in Saturn's atmosphere. There isn't much methane in the planet's atmosphere; however, the amount that is present changes the amount of light reflected by some Saturnian clouds, NASA said.

Saturn as seen by the Cassini spacecraft in infrared on May 25, 2015.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

This kind of image — which was taken from about 930,000 miles away from the planet — can help scientists figure out how Saturn's unbreathable air moves vertically.

"The darker areas reveal clouds that are lower in the atmosphere, therefore under more methane," NASA said.

"Bright areas on Saturn are higher altitude clouds."

Cassini has been beaming back data and spectacular photos of Saturn and its 62 known moons since arriving at the planet in 2004. The spacecraft should continue its mission through 2017, when it is expected to run out of fuel, making a planned death-dive into Saturn's atmosphere.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Topics: Cassini, cassini photos, Space, saturn, saturn photos, space photos, U.S., World
Source: No, this isn't a moody painting of Saturn. It's a photo.

Photo Kit: Fun with infrared filters

You know, digital camera image sensors are really very interesting – unlike film, digital sensors actually capture a wide spectrum of light.

This means that your digital camera actually captures light well beyond the spectrum of human vision, including light on both extremes of the spectrum, namely infrared and ultraviolet as well.

However, being able to capture ultraviolet and infrared isn't actually desirable when you're shooting a regular photo – images tend to look either hazy or have weird colour casts if the camera sensor is allowed to capture these extremes in the spectrum.

As such, every camera manufacturer applies a two-stage process to reduce ultraviolet and infrared – ultraviolet is cut out by applying a coating on the elements inside the lens, while infrared is cut out by using a special filter that's attached right in front of the image sensor itself.

This infrared filter is usually integrated with the low-pass filter that is used to slightly blur the image to help false colour banding (moire) in your images.

Just in case anybody asks me, cameras which advertise "no low-pass filter" still have an infrared filter in front – it's just that instead of a two-fold effect of also having the blur filter and infrared, the filter in front of the sensor only has the infrared cancelling effect.

Anyway, the point of this whole discussion on physics is that despite the infrared filter on the front, a modern digital camera can actually still capture a tiny amount of infrared light, and this is where it gets quite interesting.

Infrared photos produce really otherworldy-looking images – trees have white foliage, while water comes out very dark. It really looks very interesting and good fun to try out.

SONY IR CAM: This shot was taken with an old Sony digital camera that had a special infrared mode. Turning on the IR mode on the camera would get the camera to move its infrared filter out of the way and allow for fast handholdable shutter speeds when shooting infrared shots.

How to shoot IR shotsThere are actually a couple of ways that you can shoot infrared images with a digital camera, but the easiest way is to buy an infrared filter that blocks out all light except for infrared light.

You've probably seen some of these shots online before and believe it or not, it's actually quite easy to do.

All you need is an infrared filter and there are quite a number of manufacturers that make such a filter – Japanese filter maker Hoya makes one called the R72 filter while French company Cokin makes one called the 007 filter.

Now, before you run out and buy one, remember I mentioned that camera manufacturers apply an infrared blocking filter on the front of the image sensor? 

Because of this, with the Hoya R72 or Cokin 007 attached to the front of your lens, there's VERY little light coming in to the camera so your shutter speeds are going to be very, very slow – so slow, in fact, that you probably don't want to be shooting handheld, so a tripod is essential.

There are a few tips I can suggest when shooting infrared – while you can (and should) be doing your tweaking in Photoshop, there are a couple of things you need to be aware of when shooting with an infrared filter.

IR MARK: Some older lenses have a red marking to indicate focus for infrared. This 50mm however only has a small white dot to indicate the infrared focal point.

For one, infrared light doesn't focus at the same point as visible light – some lenses actually have a small (sometimes coloured red) marking on the lens scale window to give you an indication where to adjust focus to get the sharpest result.

Another tip is that you can set a custom white balance on the camera – many cameras allow you to shoot a white or grey card to get a custom white balance setting, but with an infrared filter on, you should instead point it at a patch of green grass to get your custom white balance setting.

Post-processingDon't expect your shots to look fantastic straight out of the camera – in fact, they're more likely to look like dull, reddish-toned photos, or if you've taken a custom white balance from a patch of grass, a little brownish.

If you want to keep your photos in colour, then once you have your shots, you should do some tweaking in Photoshop and the most common tweak is to do swap colour channels.

You do this by opening the photo in Photoshop, then choosing Image>Adjustments>Channel Mixer.

Choose the Red channel and drag red slider to 0% and the Blue slider all the way to 100%.

Next, switch to the Blue channel and drag the red slider to 100% and the Blue slider to 0%.

The main purpose of doing this is to get a slightly more natural look by turning the reddish skies blue.

However, if you're going to convert your infrared shots into black-and-white images, you can skip the channel swap adjustments and simply choose to desaturate your images in Photoshop.

Either way, you will also need to do some basic tweaking in Photoshop with a Levels adjustment to make the photos pop a bit more by adding some contrast in your shot.

COLOUR IR: This is a full-colour infrared shot of a road in Putrajaya was taken with a Hoya R72 filter with a custom white balance which I measured from a patch of green grass.

ConversionIf you are really interested in taking up infrared photography seriously and have an older DSLR lying around that you don't use, you might want to consider converting your DSLR into a dedicated infrared camera.

This involves actually removing the infrared filter on the front of your image sensor and replacing it with a simple clear filter.

Obviously, this isn't something you want to do yourself, but there are a number of companies online that will do the conversion for you if you send them your camera.

Unfortunately, it's not cheap and once converted, you can't use the camera to shoot regular photos.

Nevertheless, if you're interested, check out www.lifepixel.com which has a conversion service as well as a number of tutorials on how to shoot infrared.

(Photo Kit is a fortnightly online column in which Tan Kit Hoong (tankh@thestar.com.my) shares his thoughts on the art and technology behind cameras at thestar.com.my/tech.)

Source: Photo Kit: Fun with infrared filters

Fujifilm’s New X-T1 IR Camera Is Designed Specifically for Infrared Photography

Lifestyle • Feb 1, 2015 0 Shares 0 Comments
Source: Fujifilm's New X-T1 IR Camera Is Designed Specifically for Infrared Photography

New Fujifilm camera senses in infrared too

SHARE TWEET STUMBLE COMMENTS

Infrared photography (see Fortherock's hummingbird above) is beautiful. But Wired knows what its arrival in mainstream digital cameras means for The Internet: "Sooooo Fujifilm's New Camera Sees Through Some Clothes."

Infrared photography can create some very artful pictures. It captures trippy, dreamlike images of landscapes. In broad daylight and the thick of summer, trees and grass look like they're dusted with snow. At high noon, a light-blue sky takes on a dark-purple hue.

But one odd side effect of infrared photography is that, in some cases, it can see right through clothing. Not always, and the clothes have to be pretty thin in the first place.

Source: New Fujifilm camera senses in infrared too