Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Infrared Photo Fun!

Here I am trying to play photographer. I wish I was a better photographer, I suck, but I have fun with it anyway. =)

What follows are TWO photos taken with an old digital camera of mine.  I have an infrared filter for it and used this opportunity to pull off some fun comparisons. The first two images are from the first photo I took, the last three images are from the second photo which was taken with the IR filter.



This is the reference photograph, taken with no tweaking.




Here is the reference photograph converted to a black and white image. Half dome nearly vanished into the sky on this one. Fair contrast in the pine tree's. Nice, but not great.




Here is the same scene taken with the IR filter on my camera. This photo hasn't been manipulated in any way, this is exactly what the camera gave me with the IR filter on. Interesting colors.

You'll notice the photo is a little blurry, ultimately caused by the long exposure time necessary with the IR filter. First I had to physically push the button which probably wiggled the camera even though it was mounted on a tripod. I should have used the remote on my camera.  Second, it was windy so the trees were not stationary and the camera may have been slightly jostled by the wind too.

You might also notice a few pixels of dark noise, star-like things in the sky (then again, you may not, these images are scaled down). There's not much I can do about the dark noise other than digitally edit it out of the photo.

The next two images are just digital trickery with the previous image.



This is the IR photo with a little editing. I think this is a really fun photo.  All I did here was swap the red & blue channels (perhaps I made the trees a little more white and less green, I'm not sure, it was 5 years ago).

This resulted in some very interesting colors. I would like to play more with this. Maybe adjust the white point and tone down the blue a little.



Ah, and finally the black and white fun. This is the IR photo turned black and white. Makes for a MUCH more interesting B&W than the reference photo did.

I like that you can see half dome so clearly in the background. It faded into the sky in the B&W reference photo.

Poor definition in the trees, although the peaks contrast well with the sky here.

The photo looks much like it would if I had used a simple red filter (darker sky, etc). I would really love to play with this and get a little better exposure in the trees... Maybe next time I'm in Yosemite.


Anyway, that's some IR fun!



Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Jed's handsome mug.

As promised elsewhere here is the slideshow!

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

A work in progress no more.

So, here it is, the nursery, a work in progress...  (that's my sister-in-law helping with the painting)



And now the finished product!


It sickens me how cute we made this.  Almost makes me want to puke, but I guess that's a good thing. =)


Monday, May 5, 2008