Some infrared experiments and an INCREDIBLE final picture.

If you didn't catch the earlier post, I told you I was experimenting with infrared photography. I'm getting better at it. Infrared looks similar to normal black and white except the greens and reds turn white, while the whites and blues turn dark. It gives a pretty surreal image, but most of the difficulty is finding the right lighting conditions and composure.

This one below is a lomo style image of a few broken down old trucks I came across while making a wrong turn. I'm not a fan of trucks or anything but I thought this would make a good nostalgic kind of picture.

Ready for my final image? Maybe it's not terribly incredible to you but it is VERY moving for me. I have a fascination with things that are left behind to fade. Old stores that bankrupt owners had left sparsely furnished, old abandoned houses with furniture still visible through the windows, etc...

It always makes me wonder of who took care of these places, there must have been a happy family there at one time. How long has it been? What happened? Where are they now? All these questions run through my head. I've been thinking for a while that I wanted to get a good image of an old childrens swing set left abandoned and today I came across exactly what I was looking for. I hope that you too enjoy this picture, I spent painstaking time making it look the way I see it in my head. Let me know if you like this picture, if it moves you, and if you like the others of course too. Click on it to see it properly.

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Amazing Union Station

Today I made a trip to the Train station in my hometown of Utica NY.

The station was built with the Italianate style. Inside is a restaurant and a barber shop, one of the few barber shops in a train station today. The 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m2) waiting room's 47-foot (14 m) high vaulted ceiling is supported by 34 marble columns. The station's blueprints called for the importing of columns that originally adorned Grand Central Station in New York City. Eight large benches are heated with steam pipes and vents. -From Wikipidia.

The locomotive above I attempted to simulate "lomography". In the 80's, there was this really cheap camera called a Lomo that when you cross processed the slide film as 35mm, it would give these really nostalgic, unique colors. It works best on still objects rather than landscapes, so I thought I'd give it a try here on this train, hope you like it, I may do more of it in the future.

Here is the inside of Utica's incredible train station. These marble columns are one piece, and the ceiling goes almost 50 feet high! Everything is just covered in marble, it is absolutely incredible. It's cool too when you see the old time barbershop that still runs, although it was too dark to photo clearly. The picture above I converted to black and white, but I tried introducing a little bit of color back in and it gave it such a nice white appearance, I decided to leave it.

This is an HDR shot (above). I kept the nice gold colorcast because even though it all is actually white, It does look gold when you are in there from the lights.

I was a little upset I couldn't get this shot of the ceiling looking down as sharp as I wanted, but it still looked cool so I kept it :)

Below are two shots of some hallways that go out to the trains, one below and one above. The second is an HDR.

I hope you enjoyed these, and I hope you appreciated the time I put into getting the colors where I hoped they would work best.

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Owl, Red Panda, Loser, Infrared and some flowers.

This is an HDR I actually took through the windshield, I was surprised I was able to get it clear enough even though it had just rained. Le Barons always make me laugh, and it even more when it's raining and some idiot is driving in a convertible.

I took this picture of some kind of owl that a handler had at the zoo. I caught him at the right moment giving me a hilarious stare. I took a lot of time getting the colors to pop and maximizing the contrast. Some of his body is less sharp then I wanted, but I think it came out o.k. I love owls they are my favortie bird!

This little red panda was pretty funny and it took me a long time to actually get him to look at me. His head may seem really bright, but that's actually how it was.

I'm not a big fan of taking pictures of flowers, but I couldn't resist this patch of them because they were so bright. Of course not as bright as I corrected them here, but I thought it came out pretty cool. Don't ask me what kind they are, I have no clue!

I am trying to work with infrared style black and white. Infrared photography involves modifying a camera to pick up infrared light and filter out most visible light. This makes greens turn white, and blues to turn dark. It looks very surreal when done right, but I'm still new at it.

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HDR images of Utica NY

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Horses

Driving through the country recently, I came a cross a small farm with some horses. Actually, they had a million flies all over their faces but I cloned them all out.

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