Infrared photography, what is needed?
I’m no expert in Infrared Photography but I enjoy doing it!
Well to start with infrared photography you will need an IR filter (I use Hoya R72), a tripod and a camera. Not all cameras will allow you to take photos in Infrared. To know if your camera can allow you to do it, point your TV remote to your camera, set your camera in live view mode, and press some buttons in the remote, if you see a light, it means your camera can take IR photos, you most likely will also need a tripod.
Before you take your first shot you should put the filter on, find some nice and green grass, and take a few long exposure photos of the grass, we will need those shots later.
Once you find your subject and setup the camera, please make sure you set your camera for Custom white balance and use one of those grass shots you previously took. I advise taking several shots because different exposures mean different results and you have to try what works for you. If everything goes as planned you should be able to see in your camera a shot like the one below. (My first ever IR photo)
Once you upload your photos to the computer you are going to realize that Lightroom and Photoshop can’t read a custom white balance and your photos will be all red instead of a nice brown that the camera was showing, for that issue you will need to find a program that can read the custom white balance of your camera, in my case I use the software provided by Canon (Digital photo professional), once I open the photo in the DPP program, I export it in TIFF and open in Photoshop. Now Photoshop has no problems reading the file so you can edit it as you wish, because you took your photo in Infrared you will need to change the channels, you are going to change the blue channel with the red channel and that will give you the “real” IR feel, you can then do the normal adjustments to the curves and fine tune your photo to your liking.
Final result:
Here are a few more examples of my IR work.
