Field Edge

Infrared can offer you a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on the world around you. How­ev­er, the effects it pro­duces can be gar­ish exag­ger­at­ing the high­lights in the scene, but there are times when this can be used to good effect. One such occa­sion is in low light situations.

Hav­ing a dog oblig­ates you to walk every day. It is enjoy­able for the most part and gives you time tore­flect on and observe the local coun­try­side. Liv­ing where I do, I can enjoy wood­lands and farm­land. I do like to visu­alise poten­tial images as I walk and often noth­ing comes of these mus­ings. This par­tic­u­lar loca­tion had often caught my eye. I must have walked past this clus­ter of Hawthorn trees and grass­es hun­dreds of times over the past few years. It is adja­cent to a small farm access road, shad­ed by arch­ing trees over­head. The road is made of stone that is light in colour that reflects a beau­ti­ful soft light onto the trees and foliage to its side. It is this com­bi­na­tion and qual­i­ty of this light that had always caught my attention.

I final­ly decid­ed that I could no longer pass it by. The next sun­ny day, late in the morn­ing, I decid­ed to take advan­tage of the direc­tion of the sun, I took myself and my dog to the spot. For me, it was always going to be an infrared shot. The rel­a­tive­ly low light and dark shad­ows would make for a love­ly con­trast to the whites that would be pro­duced by the infrared light reflect­ing off the leaves and foliage. Also, this being quite a com­plex scene, I had always thought it would be bet­ter ren­dered in black and white which would help to empha­sise the tex­tures and form in the scene.

This image, for me, opti­mizes the sub­tle­ty of what infrared pho­tog­ra­phy can be. It does not have to be loud and brash scream­ing out at you.