117/365: IR/Lev XIII - Swept away

My final entry in my Intro to Digital Photography class final project. I saw this willow tree, and knew it would look fantastic in infrared. But I didn't want to simply repeat my previous "model floating" illusions. Then I thought, what if she wasn't defying gravity, but instead, gravity was defying her? The result is a little silly, a little scary and a little self-referential. I thought it a fitting conclusion to the series.

Camera: Canon 50D 720nm infrared modified
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

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116/365: IR/Lev XII - Ascension

So, spirituality and symbolism. Yeah. Pretty heavy handed here. It's an interesting image, but I'm not entirely happy with the final product. I'll likely revisit it in the future and work on it some more.

Camera: Canon 50D 720nm infrared modified
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

Now Playing: The Beach Boys Endless Summer
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115/365: IR/Lev XI - Moment of Zen

Confession time: I have trouble with backlighting. The Wife is a whiz at it, and during Imaging USA this year, I briefly got to speak with Hanson Fong about his use of infrared and he started gushing about backlighting. But I normally struggle with it. Haven't developed my lighting skills enough, it would seem. But the Austin skyline beckoned, and the only way I could possibly get this shot would be to deal with serious backlighting from the sun. I took a flyer, and it worked. Not without a whole lot of post-processing, mind you, but it worked.

The problem is, I learned this on my own (not that I have backlighting down, but I'm slightly more competent now than before with it). I took two photography courses this semester, and worked my butt off in them, but they taught me zero new technical skills. I learned more photography technique and technical skills in the one photojournalism course I took four years ago than in the three fine art photography courses I've completed, combined. There's something seriously out of whack with that. One fine art photography major quietly complained toward the end of the semester how he wanted to know how to stop fast action, like with sports, but that hadn't been covered in the 4-5 courses he'd taken. Without thinking, I said "Set your shutter speed to 1/800 or faster, with a wide open aperture to blur the background and adjust your ISO accordingly." He looked at me for a moment with a mixture of shock, elation and frustration, then said, "See? That's what I wanted to know! Why can't they teach us anything like that?" The professors in the photography department may say, "See? You learned." The trouble is, everything we learned, we learned on our own. Several times students went up to the prof in both my classes with questions on how to accomplish something technical, and were dissuaded from pursuing that line of inquiry because, "That's covered in X class you'll take next semester/year/whenever." That's not a good way to teach photographers, and one of many complaints I have about the program overall. No thanks, I won't be taking those courses. If I have to teach myself, I'll do so on my own and save myself the stress and expense.

Camera: Canon 50D 720nm infrared modified
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

Now Playing: The Beach Boys That's Why God Made the Radio
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114/365: IR/Lev X - The old fishing hole

Remember how I mentioned morning sunlight was much better for false-color infrared than late afternoon sunlight? Here is exhibit A. I thought the light was perfect--and it was, for visual photography at least. There's a reason why photographers call the 90 minutes or so before sunset the "golden hour." Colors are rich and saturated, shadows are long and soft. Perfect lighting for photography. But not infrared. Everything I shot came out nearly monochrome, and no matter how much processing I did, I couldn't draw any more color out of the images. This is still a cute picture, just not what I was striving for. I'm particularly pleased with her reflection in the water.

Camera: Canon 50D 720nm infrared modified
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

Now Playing: Various artists Travelin' Texas
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113/365: IR/Lev IX - Photo shoot

Sometimes on a photo shoot you try silly things, just to see what happens. This was a chance for the models to goof around and get a little meta on the absurdity of what we were doing. Sometimes silly is good.

Camera: Canon 50D 720nm infrared modified
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
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Chicken Ranch Central

112/365: IR/Lev VIII - Bus stop

Just to show inspiration can strike anywhere, I had no concept for this shot until we walked past these benches, and it popped into my head, fully formed. Parthenogenesis, as it were. I wasn't sure if we could execute the concept, but I'm quite happy with the way it turned out.

Camera: Canon 50D 720nm infrared modified
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

Now Playing: Clannad Rogha: The Best of Clannad
Chicken Ranch Central

111/365: IR/Lev VII - Contagion

This image gave me tons of problems. I took an array of shots with my models in different poses, but ran into the problem where one would strike a great pose, but the other two were somewhat uninspired. And so on. Then I moved the camera a split second before remembering to take the necessary background shot, and getting the various scenes properly aligned for the composite was nightmarish (parallax is a harsh mistress). But I knew I absolutely had to have one image of multiple people floating in my series, because really, that's just not done.

What if levitation were involuntary, and catching?

Camera: Canon 50D 720nm infrared modified
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

Now Playing: Clandestine To Anybody At All
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110/365: IR/Lev VI - Kensho

I like the joy, the implicit bliss and oneness with nature implicit in this image. During the class critique of the final projects, the subject of spirituality in my images came up. To my thinking, spirituality cannot be avoided in most infrared photography, regardless of whether it is false-color or monochrome. The Wood Effect characteristic of infrared turns foliage white, and white is a powerfully symbolic color for rebirth, the afterlife, supernatural, etc. It can be very subtle or very overt, but I believe it's always present. Couple that with subjects floating in the air, seemingly defying gravity, such connotations are inescapable.

Camera: Canon 50D 720nm infrared modified
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

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109/365: IR/Lev V - Light reading

One of the problems with getting your children to pose for your photo projects is that the roll their eyes and complain and generally don't want to be associated with something as dorky as a parental project. After the fact, though, they ask for a copy to use on Facebook. Such is life.

This is actually the third version of this image, and I'm still not happy with it. I've come close to hitting the mark, but none of my various processing approaches have quite hit the sweet spot I'm striving for. That's one of the perils of false-color infrared: There's no straightforward, linear action that will guarantee uniform results every time. It takes a lot of finesses and guesswork to craft these images.

Camera: Canon 50D 720nm infrared modified
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

Now Playing: Glasnots Mayfly Matinee
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108/365: RI/Lev IV - Umbrella

This was the first image from this series that told me I was really on to something. This was also the image that drove home the point to me that morning sunlight is much, much, much better for false color infrared than evening sun. I'd tried several evening shoots, and while the results were interesting with nice contrast, they were quite devoid of useable color and only suitable for black and white conversion. This image, on the other hand, made me say "Wow!" even before I got it out of the camera.

Camera: Canon 50D 720nm infrared modified
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

Now Playing: Joanne Shenandoah and Lawrence Laughing Orenda
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107/365: IR/Lev III - Spawning run

While I take my art seriously, whether it be writing, photography or anything else, I never want to come across as a Serious Artist. That level of self-importance just isn't me. So I like to include some level of humor in my projects, whether its apparent in the final results or not. In this case, it's not particularly subtle. I don't think the model knew what he was getting into when he started trying random, spontaneous poses, but I instantly knew this was a winner. Anything that makes me smile is a winner.

Camera: Canon 50D 720nm infrared modified
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

Now Playing:
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106/365: IR/Lev II - The opposite of falling

My infrared levitation series continues. This is, without a doubt, the most ambitious photography project I've ever undertaken. I've never used infrared in this exclusively, or so aggressively. And I'd never attempted levitation before. All while breaking in a new camera. And the locations! Apart from selling the illusion, two things were important to me in this project: 1) it couldn't look like I shot everything at the same place and B) it couldn't be the same person in every shot. So that meant multiple models and multiple locations. Multiple shoots over multiple days, in Austin, New Braunfels, San Marcos and San Antonio. Some people stood me up. Some shoots fell through. And some concepts just didn't work no matter how hard everyone tried. But that's part of what makes art, art.

What is the opposite of falling?

Camera: Canon 50D 720nm infrared modified
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

Now Playing: Various artists Native American Currents
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105/365: IR/Lev I - Up a tree

The second conceptual element of my digital photography final is "infrared." The recently-converted Canon 50D that has supplanted my old converted Canon Rebel XTi? Yeah, I put it through its paces in a big way. And I love it--except for my oft-repeated complaints about the lack of a good remote trigger. Images are cleaner, less noisy with the 50D. And I took a lot of images with it for this series.

Infrared levitation. That's my series concept. A quick Google search tells me that's one of the very few photographic combinations that hasn't been exploited to the Nth degree via Flickr, Deviant Art, etc. So I think I've got a winner. The otherworldly, ethereal tones coupled with the illusion of defying gravity makes for a whimsically surreal visual, no? Stay tuned, as they say. More to come.

Camera: Canon 50D 720nm infrared modified
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

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104/365: Up a tree

This... this is the project that took up most of my month of April. Those of you keeping score at home may remember I've had some issues in my Intro to Digital Photography course, namely, the fact that my prof has rigid views of what constitutes "good photography" and what doesn't. Consequently, he's low-balled my grades, saying "It didn't look like you put much effort into them." This led directly to my "Missing Persona" series, which was a shot across the bow. I got an A for that one, but a grudging one at 91, not nearly enough to pull my overall average up from the B he'd stuck me at. So this series is my response, double-dog daring him to not give me a strong A for this project, and an A for the course overall. I hold grudges. When I'm old and grey, I'll telling my grandkids about this epic battle of wills. Win or lose, I'll have fought it on my terms.

Ironically, this first image is only here because this is the direction my prof tried to steer me. He wanted to rein me in whereas I wanted to push farther beyond the envelope. So I allowed this one concession. My project consisted of two, core concepts that I felt would feed off each other to create a profoundly surreal visual experience. The first of these elements is "levitation," a form of photo composite trickery that's A) quite popular online and 2) something I'd never attempted before. So that's what's on display in this image, Bug climbing a mesquite tree in defiance of gravity. This serves as my "control" group, giving visual context to what is yet to come when I add the second element, one that is--photographically speaking--close to my heart.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

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