Fashion Photoshoot: "Siouxsie Sioux"

I took these a couple of weeks ago in Hackney, for a very talented fashion student called Caroline. They were shot in infrared and converted to black and white.

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Infrared Portraits

I took these last Summer at an open air festival of dance. They were part of a random experiment as I was still getting to grips with infrared photography, and I've only just processed them because I didn't know how to do that properly either! I will definitely do more of this type of work, particularly when the light is too harsh for colour photography.

Re-lighting the Millennium Bridge

I saw this guy hanging beneath the bridge and his foreman asked me to take a picture as his camera batteries had failed. He explained that they were fitting new lights to the underside of the bridge. He gave me his business card and asked me to email my pictures to him.

This was shot in infrared and I made two new exposures in RAW (+2 and -2) then combined all three in Photomatix Pro. I'm disappointed with the result because I've carelessly focussed on the bridge and not on the workman, but I will send the picture on anyway.

Hampstead Heath

I took this on Sunday on a very windy but sunny day. The sunshine brought lots of people out with their crazy dogs. Actually the dogs are ok, it's the owners that are the problem!
This was shot in infrared and converted to black and white before applying my favourite filter - tonal contrast by Nik Color Efex.

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Canary Wharf

I took this last Saturday after exiting the station and just before being stopped by security. I always get approached by security when taking pictures in Canary Wharf!
Once again, I produced two additional exposures in RAW (+2 and -2) then adjusted levels and curves in CS3. Finally converted it to black and white then added a tonal contrast filter from Nik Color Efex Pro 3. I'm thinking about creating an action in PS3 for conversions to black and white as I seem to making the same adjustments (more or less) for this process.
The use of a fisheye lens introduces previously non-existent curves which draw the eye through the image to the top of the tower.

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Canary Wharf Station

Brief:

Look for and take four photographs using curves to emphasize movement and direction.

I took this on Saturday while travelling up the escalator. I had to go up it a few times (four to be precise) before I got a shot that I was happy with - I particularly wanted the view of the office block through the window. I produced two additional exposures in RAW (+2 and -2) then adjusted levels and curves in CS3. Finally converted it to black and white then added a tonal contrast filter from Nik Color Efex Pro 3.
This image uses curves with the aid of a fisheye lens and the escalotors act as leading lines.
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Post Office Tower

I know it's called the BT Tower, but I prefer the original name! This was taken last Saturday while on my way to meet a friend, and is made up of 3 bracketed shots. They were combined and tone mapped in Photomatix Pro, then levels and curve adjustments done in CS3.

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Geffreye Museum

I popped into the Geffreye Museum last Monday - haven't been since primary school. If you enjoy having a nose around other people's houses, it's well worth a visit!

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Self-Portrait

I've been experimenting with infrared self-portraits, and after 3 days of trying, I got a shot that I'm reasonably happy with, although it's a bit softer than I'd like:

I've uploaded it to the profile page of my website, which will be launched tomorrow. I generally don't take portraits, so I wasn't terribly confident at processing this one. I applied some dodging to the whites of the eyes, added Nik's tonal contrast filter with the exclusion blending mode (after experimenting with a few others) and this is what I ended up with!

Infrared Day

The light was good this morning, and there were lots of clouds in the sky, so I decided to just shoot in infrared today. I went to London Bridge, Southwark Cathedral and the Tate Modern.
I took some shots of a stained-glass window to represent 'opaque' and I think this works in IR because the colour of the glass is not really the object of the exercise:

I had originally thought of capturing something small through a magnifying glass to make it 'large' and taking a large object from a distance to make it 'small'. As I was crossing the Millenium Bridge, I noticed that my shadow stretched quite far along the bridge, and decided to used this to denote 'large' instead:

Looking  down onto the main entrance of the Tate, I found some 'small' people. This was converted to greyscale in RAW, but I wasn't happy with the dominant light coming from the windows in the ceiling and at the back of the hall. I cropped it, which places the subjects on a rule of thirds 'hot spot', and applied a Guassian blur to lessen the impact of the windows. I then applied a layer mask to remove the blur on the subjects and draw attention to them: