Père Lachaise - Infrared Poetry

EXPLORED!!! 16 on Monday, November 1, 2010

This is an Infrared capture from my last trip to Paris.

 

I decided to start experimenting again with infrared.

My camera (5d Mark II) has a pretty strong IRcut filter, so the average exposures are 2-3 minutes at ISO 400 (f/8) in daylight.

This made me face some new 'technical' problems, such as noise reduction on long exposures on medium valued ISO. My best solution (at the moment being) is turning

the Long Exposure Noise Reduction on camera ON. This makes a dark frame subtraction and is really effective on killing a great amount of digital noise (this can't be

performed that effectively in post processing - without taking a black frame to map the noise on the sensor, obviously)

 

By the way, in the next few days my dear friend Joel Tjintjelaar will put online my article 'an Overview on infrared photography' on his great website, BWVISION. I would appreciate your comment on that!!!

I will put a link to it in this description as soon as I have it is available. I also strongly suggest you to check Joel's great album out, if you haven't done it yet.

 

 

Back to the shot; the Père Lachaise cemetery is really a great place for infrareds; great mood, some nice vegetation and beautiful architectures. I could have spent a week there

just capturing its splendid shapes and lines. In the future I might try do complete an extensive project there.

 

 

A LITTLE NOTE:

These days I'm receving many new contacts add.

It's great and I like it but, unfortunately, I can't reciprocate all. As I have written in my profile, I am trying to keep my contact number small and manageable. Hope you don't feel sorry for that.

 

 

 

Details

- CANON 5d Mark II, EF 17-40 @ 28mm, f/8, 165 s, ISO 400

- Mirror Lockup, Phottix TR-90 Remote Shutter

- Hoya R72 (720 nm Infrared Filter)

- Tripod

 

The shot

Shot in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, in Paris

 

The Processing

 

Photoshop:

 

- Converted to black and white using NIK Silver Efex Pro plugin;

- Added 9 Soft light layers to dodge/burn selectively;

- Added a Curve layer to bring some light in the darkest areas;

- Erased a dust spot using the healing brush;

- Resized for the Web (1200px);

- Applied an Unsharp Mask to slightly improve contrast;

- Smart Sharpen + More accurate (On luminosity 'blending mode' with the sky masked off);

- Framing and Signature.

 

 

Take a look at it, LARGE on Black :

Père Lachaise - Infrared Poetry, on Black

 

 

@ You all

Comments, faves and critiques are always welcomed!

 

 

I'm planning a sunrise session for tomorrow; yesterday I chose the location (I was there working - as engineer - but had my trusty compass with me, it's 95 km from where I live),

so I will get up really early. Tones and colors are just amazing, I hope light will be on my side!!! I'll update you on than in my next upload.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

Done