What’s in Color?

Exploring infrared techniques, as seen in the striking image titled “Ethereal Beacon” taken at Tower Hill Botanic Garden.

In some of my past posts I have written about my enjoyment of experimenting with my photography, among which Infrared photography has played and will continue to play a role. In ‘A Thursday Throwback‘ from a couple of weeks ago, I shared an image that I still enjoy in its ethereal black & white looks, which has many greens turn to bright white.

In today’s image, I took a different approach in treating the image…

Ethereal Beacon

This shot came about during an infrared photography walk at Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, Massachusetts. There were a lot of interesting images that came about that day (and I will share more of them in upcoming posts), and this one really stood out among them.

I have a fondness for capturing sunbursts, as they can sometimes produce a striking image. To achieve the desired angle, I positioned myself rather flat on the ground and wiggled into just the right angle to get the Sun placed behind the allium flower. I also had a bit of luck, as it appears that a small element detached itself from the flower to float up into the air a bit.

I’ll put together a series of posts on my infrared experimentation at a later time, as it is a lot of fun to work through the process of visualizing what might be and then post-processing to get the desired and hoped-for results.

Shot of the Week – vol 7

Books have the answers

Searching-for-Answers-140427
Searching for Answers

As the best shot of this week was Doane’s Falls featured frozen in the Winter in New England post, I thought that it might be interesting to take something from the archives.

Today’s image is ‘Searching for Answers’, which was created in 2014 during a workshop held by Brooke Shaden in Yonkers, NY.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, taking a workshop with Brooke is truly inspirational and truly energizing!  Please check out Brooke’s blog Promoting Passion, where she shares a lot of detail about her process and approach to creating her stunning images.

About The Image

We were shooting in a wonderful, old mansion that is undergoing a slow, thoughtful renovation.  When I walked into the library and saw the curtains and beautiful woodwork, I immediately had the idea of an ethereal being coming from the past to look for understanding of what happened during her life, which is the source for the title.

As luck would have it, we did have access to a wonderful red dress that looked great on Steph, the model in this shot.  Next steps were to make her float in the right location in front of the bookshelves and to ensure that the rest of the room played along just right.

The planning made the post-processing a breeze; only about 4 hours’ work to get that done.

Hope you like this image, and, if there’s interest, I would be happy to do a post that talks in more detail about the entire process.