UPLOAD

Looking at

the Low End

Infrared photography
reveals a world invisible
to the naked eye.
By Richard Kadrey

For the human eye, the lowest visible wavelengths are red light measuring about 700 nanometers (nm). Below that, infrared radiation runs from about 750nm down to 1mm. When photographed in this part of the spectrum, leaves and grass glow with energy, as if the entire natural world is lined with fiber optics. Skin is luminous and perfect, like alabaster. Infrared photography gives you an inhuman view of the world, and it’s a beautiful one.

In the beginning, infrared photography was noth- an expensive camera to take great shots. In fact, ing you needed to know about. It was a high-tech cheaper and so-called “dinosaur” digital cameras procedure reserved for laboratories and mapping can be the best ones for IR shooting. The reason satellites. Even when artists got their hands on the is simple: most high-end cameras come with a stuff, it required special film that had to be kept in built-in infrared-blocking filter (sometimes called an ice chest until it was used, and special processing “hot glass”) that sits right in front of the camera’s that required access to a darkroom with the right sensor chip. Cheap cameras don’t always have this chemicals, and all the expenses those items entailed. IR filter, and they’re easy to hack if they do. But

Digital photography has made infrared accessible remember when picking your cheap camera to to everyone. That’s great news to those using IR for make sure it has a Preview mode. This will allow the first time, because this is when you’re liable to you to see your infrared shot and make adjust-make the most mistakes. Better yet, you don’t need ments on the fly.

Photography by Richard Kadrey

50 Make: Volume 12