There are times when you want to take your camera out of the bag, but just don’t seem to have anything interesting to photograph. Or at least, you think you don’t. The truth is, however, that you can make just about anything interesting if you put the right spin on it.
I recently went out into a field looking for wildlife. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any. I continued searching, but to no avail. There was nothing but the open field and the trees of a surrounding forest. And the forest was unfortunately just as vacant. I was about to give up, but then, I noticed the sky; vivid blue with high clouds sweeping by in quite the rush.
My first impression was to take a long exposure of the clouds, but unfortunately didn’t have neutral density filter. Without something to majorly reduce light, any exposure long enough to catch the motion of the clouds would overwhelm the scene with white. But then, I happily remembered that there was an infrared lens in my bag. Of course, infrared is a far different effect (but still quite nice) than what first came to mind, but that’s perfectly alright. It actually would have been nice to have both effects, but the IR did of course allow the shutter to stay open for a very long time, recording a significant time lapse of cloud motion, which was ultimately what I was after. And as you can see, the ultimate result was a very dramatic sky seen in a unique light.
IR filter, f/13, 30 sec, ISO100
Sometimes, finding the right shot is just a matter of keeping your eyes open. I want looking for some wildlife, but in spite of the fact that none could be found, I still didn’t leave empty handed. In the same way, you can find latent opportunities by just looking around a little.
Any questions or thoughts? I’d love to hear from you! I’ll answer as soon as possible.
I did an article a while back on infrared photography. It is said that this is how some animals see the world.
I didn’t know that
I knew there where some who only saw in black and white, but not that some could only see the lower end of light frequency.
Oh yeah, for sure some do. When we were camped with the Maasai guarding us in the Rift Valley of Kenya we saw that. The leopards prey on baboons, but in daylight the baboons in their numbers with huge canines were daunting.
They would wait till after nightfall because they have night vision and the baboons don,t. We could hear them from our tents.
They would scare the baboons up huge sycamore trees. Because the leopards can also climb the baboons would go higher and further out on branches screaming all the time until one invariably fell off and was toast!
Sounds like quite a way to hunt! No getting entangled in a bloody fight, just let gravity do the work. I’m sure that it didn’t happen that way all the time though.
You must have some really good stories to tell.
My wife, Kat is the photographer and I am sending a link to your website to her. She loves to be artistic and create beautiful works of art. I, on the other hand, love to sit and enjoy them.
Thanks Pat
I hope that this site can be helpful to her.
Love the look of the cloud movement. IR gives the scene a very different flavor, doesn’t it?
Thanks Lisa
If you ever saw an IR filter, it’s so dark that you can’t see through it unless you hold it to a bright light. Because it’s so dark, you have to leave the shutter open for a long time in order to let in sufficient light. That’s of course why the shutter stayed open for a full thirty seconds, during which the clouds moved a considerable distance, giving us the motion effect.
The ND (neutral density) filter comes in where you want to use such slow shutter speeds without the dynamic color. If you were to use one of those in that specific situation, the sky would be blue, the cedars would be green rather than white, but the clouds would still have been in motion.