THURSDAY 3rd DECEMBER
INVISIBLE LIGHT – FUN with INFRARED
DAVID BROOKES ARPS and ELIZABTH RESTALL ARPS
David is a dedicated member of our club and he volunteered to give us a talk about infrared photography, a subject that probably most members would never attempt as it is a topic not many people have knowledge of and it’s not an easy subject to master.
David explained how he has been taking infrared photographs for over forty years starting off with film and then, as time went by and digital cameras were introduced onto the market he moved on too initially using a filter over the end of his lens and then more recently having a camera converted for purely infrared shots.
As far a composition is concerned, taking an infrared photograph doesn’t differ too much from taking a normal photograph, but the similarity ends there as the images produced show us a changed world, grass and trees become white, the sky (on a bright day) becomes almost black and the image has a saturated contrast. In other words infrared photography is a unique genre that produces images quite unlike typical photographs.
David was able to show his film images as part of his talk because he has digitised them using his own ‘Heath Robinson’ set-up to photograph them and then store them on his computer, a process which has taken him quite some time to perfect.
Elizabeth is another member who has a dedicated infrared camera and after David had finished his talk she also showed some of her images. In the shots taken by both photographers there was an impressionistic, almost ghost like feel to the images taken in the countryside, a superb clarity to the cityscape images and a midwinter feel to those taken on midsummer days. They both showed images that were dreamy and peaceful and if taken on an ordinary camera in colour would have been deleted before you even got home.
Both David and Elizabeth had, in post processing, added colour to their monochrome images which in itself added a completely different dimension to the image as the colours were not ones you would associate with the items photographed. By the end of the evening I think most members thought infrared images to be surreal but in their own way quite magical.
Thank you both for a really enjoyable and informative evening.