August: month in review
Each month I aim to pick an image that, in my mind at least, captures the flavour of that month. It might not be the best image from the month, or the most spectacular of subjects; it just needs to illustrate something about the month. The value for me is in the writing - it’s a tool for review and reflection. If you enjoy the words and picture, that’s a bonus!
Rhubarb Field, Houston
Fujifilm X-T3 (IR Conversion) | 90mm f/5.6 1/320s ISO 400
What’s this month’s image? It’s part of a small copse of trees just a few minutes walk from my house in what is locally known as the Rhubarb Field.
Did you do anything to it? No… and yes. On one level this is just a straight black and white conversion of the original file. Indeed, the image isn’t too far away from the in-camera file. The contrast has been boosted a little and the black point has been shifted to give it a little punch. The twist is that it’s an image from a camera that has been converted to take infrared images, which is what lends the picture it’s slightly ethereal look.
What’s it doing here? In a month where we’ve been to the lovely Isle of Mull and I’ve been on a macro workshop up at Knapdale, near the Crinan Canal, it may seem a little perverse to select an image taken just minutes from my own doorstep. However, it’s here for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s a local feature that I’ve photographed literally dozens of times, in different seasons, at different times of the day and in all weathers. For such a simple scene it seems to present a wealth of opportunity. I’m sure that at some point one of the housebuilders will slap a small estate on the site, destroying it’s understated beauty, but until that time I’ll keep coming back for inspiration.
Secondly, and of more significance, is that it’s an infrared image. Infrared photography is something that’s interested me for quite some time - the look of the high contrast black and white and false colour images is something that I’ve long admired. When, in 2020, it became apparent that we weren’t going anywhere very far away for quite some time I took the plunge and bought a very old, infrared converted camera. The hope was that it would give me an opportunity to explore the local surroundings, with which we became depressingly familiar quite quickly, in a different light. In the main, the experiment worked and episodically I’d go out and shoot with this cheap and very imperfect camera.
If you’re interested in the technicalities of this type of photography there’s a decent starter article here, but at it’s heart the conversion process makes the camera much more sensitive to light beyond the visible spectrum and less sensitive to visible light. The process typically produces images that are very red in appearance, the processing will usually convert this to a black and white image or one that shows ‘false colour’. in practical terms, blues (for example in the sky) translate as being close to black while foliage, through a phenomenon called chlorophyll fluorescence, turns bright white in direct sunlight.
The attraction of the resulting images is that they’re striking because they are close enough to reality to be recognisable, but with an obvious off-kilter colour palette. I find that people either like it or hate it, with little middle ground. As you might have guessed, I’m a fan. Indeed, so much so that when I upgraded my main camera I took the opportunity to upgrade my infrared kit by having the old camera converted, giving me a more modern and higher resolution IR body.
There are a few conversion options available (there’s more information here), but I chose to go with a 720nm conversion which allows me to play with both false colour and black and white. I’ve show a few examples (with a couple from the archive, below).
Have you been up to much else? A fair bit… I’ve done a fair amount of photography at the Fringe for the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas (more of which later - possibly), but had to fit this around a macro workshop with the excellent Philip Price at Loch Visions and a trip to the Isle of Mull with Mull Wildlife Breaks. I’m happier with the macro images than the Mull images, but a selection of both is below.
Coming Up
September is looking very chore filled…
