Working In Another Light - Mastering Infrared Photography

If you Google Infrared Pho­tog­ra­phy, you will see exam­ples of what is com­mon­ly per­ceived to be infrared pho­tog­ra­phy and you will be pre­sent­ed with high con­trast images with lit­tle tonal vari­a­tion often tak­en in the summertime.

This advanced class is designed to go way beyond the reg­u­lar infrared pho­tog­ra­phy. Dur­ing this work­shop you will gain an under­stand­ing of how to recog­nise what will make a great infrared pho­to­graph and learn how dif­fer­ent sub­jects will ren­der in infrared tones. You will also learn to recog­nise the sub­tlest of vari­a­tions in light and how these will effect your final pho­to­graph and how to take advan­tage of these as the light changes. The pow­er of infrared on over­cast days and inclement weath­er is some­thing that has to be explored to be believed and many pho­tog­ra­phers are often sur­prised to learn that grad­u­at­ed neu­tral den­si­ty fil­ters are sel­dom need­ed. Because we are work­ing with a cam­era that can see light that the human eye can­not, the slight­est vari­a­tion in light can make a vast dif­fer­ence to the fin­ished image. At first this will be a rev­e­la­tion and soon lead to a com­plete­ly new way of see­ing the landscape.

Being out with your cam­era and learn­ing all of the above is only part of this excit­ing jour­ney dur­ing this mas­ter­class; the post pro­duc­tion work and image edit­ing is the oth­er huge­ly reward­ing aspect. Because of the impor­tance of the ​‘dig­i­tal dark­room’ in the mak­ing of fine infrared images, half of this work­shop will be indoors where we will cov­er every aspect of con­vert­ing the image to true black and white and teas­ing out the sub­tle tones, teach­ing you the art of fine infrared print mak­ing. Each per­son on this work­shop will go home with a fin­ished print from their time with us!

Paul Gal­lagher and Michael Pilk­ing­ton have pio­neered infrared land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy over the past eight years by offer­ing two day work­shops in the Lake Dis­trict enti­tled ​‘Learn Infrared Pho­tog­ra­phy’. They nev­er trav­el any­where with­out their infrared con­vert­ed cam­eras and infrared pho­tog­ra­phy has become an inte­gral way they pho­to­graph the land­scapes of the world. They are also the authors of the much acclaimed ebook ​‘In Anoth­er Light’ which demon­strates and show­cas­es their approach to infrared pho­tog­ra­phy. If you want to expe­ri­ence and learn what could be a whole new aspect of your land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy, then this work­shop is a must.

This is aa advanced work­shop, and for this rea­son the group will be lim­it­ed to four pho­tog­ra­phers only so plen­ty of one to one time can be spent with every­body. If you want to learn from mas­ters in this field about the pur­suit of infra-red land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy, then this work­shop is for you.