Seeing Red
My Obsession With The Unseen Turns Colorful
A Revealed Talent
For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with the unseen, the world just beyond our reach, whether it be emotion, or spirit, or color. They all have this in common — to the ordinary, they do not exist, or if they do their effect on the seen is limited.
One of my many interests is the realm of the captured image, moments in time and space that speak for the unspoken. When I was taking course work at community college and university, I learned the mechanics of image crafting as well as being exposed to many different kinds of photography, based on type (film choices, camera choices), talent (subject), or task (portraiture, events, landscapes). One we didn’t go over, because of the difficulty of processing, was Infrared (IR).
What Is Infrared Photography?
Infrared Photography is simply using a detection method that is sensitive to infrared light, which lies below the visible light spectrum. It can be achieved by special film emulsions or by digital sensors with certain filters removed from the camera.
The Film Days
In the film days, there was wet work and dry work. The wet work was the processing of the film and prints. We took the film containers and put them in light-proof bags to open. The film was then put onto a reel and processed with various chemicals. For IR work the film was more sensitive and even temperature could damage it. And the trick with using “red lights” that the film was less sensitive to didn’t work, so you were in complete darkness doing all this prep work to develop your film. Taking the image required putting the camera on a tripod because once you put the filter on, you couldn’t see through the camera (The filters were black to the naked eye but transparent to infrared)
Why Infrared?
Humans see a limited portion of the EM spectrum. Wavelengths that are too long or too short simply disappear from view. Infrared sits below red and is invisible to the naked eye. But infrared film is sensitive to this wavelength, so it allows that light to be captured. Depending on the object’s ability to reflect (lighter image) or absorb (darker image) relative to visible light you will see different results. For example, in the cover photo for this article, the foliage at the park I shot this image at reflects more infrared light (many leaves do) so the grass and trees are brighter. Water absorbs IR so it appears nearly black, adding a dream-like quality to the images.
More Examples
In this image, the coat of my sister-in-law is black in visible light, but the cloth fibers reflect IR light, so it appears white.
In this photo of my mother and grandmother, you can see the dreamlike quality IR imaging can add to a “standard portrait”. This is caused by the way the material that makes up the emulsion and light-sensitive materials work to capture the image.
In this final image, you can see again the way IR light is reflected from leaves and absorbed by the water, changing the interpretation.
The Digital Age
Most of us don’t use film cameras anymore (indeed many use only the cams built into their communication devices). Digital photography has changed how IR is done. I will go into this in more detail in my next article, but suffice to say that this effect can be simulated as a filter, but isn’t really IR work unless you are capturing the interaction of the IR light, which many digital sensors have filters now to block. It requires some physical hacking of the camera to remove the filter used to block IR light, exposing this beautiful world to the camera.
Why I Look For The Unseen
I believe the world in which we live is just the surface of a deeper world, full of mystery, brilliant, beautiful, and sometimes dangerous. But this truth deserves to be told too. And through IR photography I can begin to explore this world that is out of reach to the unaided eye. To me, it’s very natural, this pursuit. It informs my spirituality, my desire to understand how things work and why things work. I hope this part of my journey, rediscovering my art, will prove fruitful to me and to you, my readers.
