I recently completed an infrared photography workshop led by Nevada Wier. During the workshop I was inspired to try photographing people in infrared, and instead of converting directly to black and white, using the colors that were already present in my infrared capture. I had many “ah-ha’s” the most fascinating is …. make up doesn’t really matter in infrared. A woman can look great without an ounce of make-up on.
The portraits in this post are self-portraits taken with window light (I worked up a sweat running back and forth to my camera to make sure I was in focus and in the frame!). Here are a few things I learned:
- Bright sunlight makes things a lot easier. I first tried shooting away from the window and with a flash. I was getting pretty garish shadows and effects. Once I moved to the window things started to work. I tried adding flash as a fill light, but found a simple white foam core board worked much better.
- Watch for dark shadows around the eyes. This was a challenge for me, I ended up having to correct in post.
- The skin smooths out and glows. I did not use any “wrinkle-correction” in these images.
- Leave some of the color in the image and de-saturate it in post. Below are some black and white and color images for comparison.
I have decided to use my infrared more often for portraiture, especially if I don’t feel like putting on make-up just to wash it off an hour later. Unfortunately the same is not true for the hair – you still have to put effort into that.
pamphotography 