After reading a post on “Macro Art in Nature” that used a baseball analogy to discuss shooting within one’s comfort zone versus moving out of the box and trying some different things, I decided to do just that today. Today was a day that I stayed away from my typical flower and bird shots and looked to do some different things even if the subjects remained the same.
This first image is of some (what we have always called) cattails. I decided to shoot it with my IR-converted Canon Rebel XT with a 24-70mm f/2.8L lens, handheld. I opened up the aperture to f/4.0 which I don’t typically do with IR. And in post-processing I desaturated the image completely to create a black and white infrared image.
The second image also sprang to life from my IR-converted Rebel XT and 24-70 lens. This is a purple coneflower again shot as an IR image. And again I shot wide open (f/3.2). I desaturated the image in Photoshop CS4 and then added color back in using the hue and saturation settings for cyanotyping. I kinda liked the effect so I went with it. I also kicked up the contrast quite a bit to hopefully make the flower stand out a bit more.
Any comments/thoughts/critiques???
Love these IR shots, especially the last one.
Comment by SuzieQ — July 3, 2009 @ 5:23 pm
Normally i don’t care as much for the IR shots but I really do like the cattails. Nice.
Comment by Cedar — July 3, 2009 @ 7:34 pm
oooh…I love the blue/cyan one!!! Very nice! I like the catails too…I’m just jealous that you beat me to posting a click of them! ;o)
Comment by Stacey — July 3, 2009 @ 10:46 pm
I especially like the first image, perhaps because of the contrast. I looks as though IR gives you a lot of flexibility to emphasize your subject. I find both images very pleasant!
Comment by montucky — July 4, 2009 @ 12:06 am
I like the first one more. The contrast is more pleasing to me. The coneflower is very pretty, though. I love experimentation.
Comment by burstmode — July 5, 2009 @ 8:09 am
I like both of these Ed. Somehow the cattails remind me of roasting hot dogs on a stick.
Comment by Mark — July 12, 2009 @ 3:04 pm