Montvale Barn in Infrared

Image Description

This barn is along a curvy road between my house and town. I had to park my car and walk to it as there are no shoulders along the roadway and the road is well traveled.

Type of Critique Requested

  • Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
  • Emotional: Feedback on the emotional impact and artistic value of the image.
  • Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.

Specific Feedback and Self-Critique

I thought the barn would make an interesting infrared image. But I am a little bothered by the fence post in the center. I don’t think there was much room for me to move for another angle. I was afraid to try to remove the fence post, because then I would just have fence with no post.

What a fascinating look to this scene, Lisa. I love the IR look. The fence post doesn’t bother me at all. It’s part of the scene. I love the horse in the scene…interesting to see an IR version of a horse. :slightly_smiling_face: This looks like full spectrum IR, do you have a converted camera? Just curious about the camera you used.

I might suggest bringing the brightness down a bit…it feels a bit over bright, even for IR.

I also think this would look pretty cool in B&W. I downloaded the image, reduced the brightness and converted it to B&W…not bad at all.

Anyway, love the very different look here, Lisa. Well done.

1 Like

Wow, that is a different look. I’ve thought about converting my old GH3 to IR, but haven’t done it. Removing the post in post (groan) should be easy if it really bothers you. It is a bit of a jarring note, but as David said, it’s part of the scene. All farms have fences. The composition feels sort of cradled if you know what I mean. The room around the building and paddock feels right and I like the trees behind - it’s as if they are protecting the part below.

1 Like

Hi Lisa,

This is really nice! It has a wonderful hand painted feel to it.

The fence post doesn’t bother me either, but if you want to remove it, it is plausible to have shot the scene between fence post since there’s only one anyway (in other words, there could be a post on either side just out of the frame). Only problem would be that the fence wire goes to a slight peak at the post and that “might” be noticeable to sharp eyes.

Otherwise, the image seems too bright as @David_Bostock mentioned, I think you’re losing depth and definition at this level.
I’ll have to say that the color in this is awesome to my eyes!

I used the exposure mask in Ps for the edit below, I lowered the exposure to -.30 and increased gamma to +.70 (no offset)
I think that the adjustments added depth…and definition to the scene but that’s just my opinion.

Literally everything else in the scene is great including technicals as well as aesthetics IMHO. :slight_smile:

Note: The edited version puts the brightest looking white parts at 220. (red 220, green 220, blue 220) which is nice pleasant brightness for scenes with snow in my very humble opinion.

Edit:
Hi Lisa, I am really intrigued by your IR image, it makes me want to explore the idea of trying it out myself.
I was up at 4am and needed something to do so I decided to see what this would look like without the fence post and maybe even remove the stray branch at the post as well, after that I decided to try adding a very slight amount of Orton Effect to the highlights in the trees. If you’re not familiar with the Orton Effect, there are several methods demonstrated on YouTube.

The main thing here is that it’s only ideas for you to consider, use any of it or none of it.
The only thing I feel needs addressing is the brightness and even that is just my personal opinion.
I really hope you don’t mind me exploring ideas and posting it for you to consider.

To further state my interest, it isn’t just the IR that intrigues me, it’s also the scene you have so wonderfully captured!!
Love it :slight_smile:

BTW, I don’t think anyone will notice the slight arch in the fence wire unless they are really looking for it.

2 Likes

Hi again, Lisa

May I ask what the wave length is of your IR camera (850nm or ) ?
Or were you using a filter on a non converted camera?

I’m trying to figure out what type of conversion I need to have done.
I have a couple of Sony a6000 APS-C mirrorless cameras in addition to my full frame camera so I was thinking about having one of the a6000 cameras converted.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated!

1 Like

I actually have 3 converted cameras. The first one was a Leica D-Lux point and shoot that I had converted by Kolari Vison. It is a 720nm conversion.

My Nikon D810 was converted by Lifepixel to their super color filter which is 590nm. This is the camera I used for this shot.

Most recently i was given a Nikon D7100, and since I have 3 other cameras, I had the D7100 converted to Hyper Color which is 470nm. The Hypercolor filter is something I have not yet mastered. It gives some pretty bright purples when I swap the channels. I am not sure yet whether I like it. I also haven’t used it as much. If you want to see any samples, I am happy to share what I have done

I definitely like the 590nm, although a friend of mine has the super blue conversion and it produces some great color.

I don’t think I would like the full spectrum just because I hate carrying around filters. But, that obviously gives you the most function.

Hope this helps

1 Like

Thank you for the edits. I do now see that it was too bright. I think I was going for a frosty look, but your edits are better!

1 Like

@Merv
@Kris_Smith
@David_Bostock

Thank you for the feedback and edits. Infrared can be fun, but editing, for me is a bit more challenging. I am still working on it! Happy Weekend.

1 Like

Thank you for explaining your setup, Lisa!

If the images you are offering to show me are the ones on your website on the landscape and nature page, I’ve seen them and they look great!
I saw this image without the fence post on your landscape page as well and it looks great too!

I’ve been looking through a bunch of images on Kolari’s IR gallery and it just proves to me that I have some studying to do as well as a decision to make concerning which wave length to convert to, I do have two other cameras though :roll_eyes:

I want to do at least one conversion so thanks a bunch for the information and for the inspiration! :slight_smile:

Thanks again!

@Merv If you want to see some of the SuperBlue filter, my friend is on Flicker and below is a link to her infrared album.

Infrared | Flickr

1 Like

Thank you, Lisa

I’ll have a look for sure! :slight_smile:

1 Like