One of the reasons I – and others – love infrared photography is the effect it has on green vegetation in strong lighting; it turns it stark white!  For this week’s Picture of the Week I wanted to share some examples of this.  Last year when photographing in Doughton Park for my Questions in Space image,  I absolutely fell in love with the tree pictured above.  Holly and I made it to the tree around sunset, and I ended up walking all around it photographing it.  It’s just a gorgeous tree!  I was struck by how different it looked from different angles, and I was also enjoying how the infrared look changed as the direction of light changed.  Though the white trees are one of the alures of infrared, the image above, which is more of a transitionary view, was my favorite.

In addition to turning trees white, infrared can also turn the sky almost black, depending on your angle to the sun.  It’s a really neat effect I think, and I enjoyed the contrast of the white tree and black sky in the image below in the Alternative Perspectives section.  This is the same tree as featured above, just from another angle.

Finally, the last image is one taken right here on the farm.  I happened to notice when coming home from the gym in the evenings that the sun lit up this one particular tree over near my parent’s pond.  I was guessing that infrared would make this really pop, and when I grabbed my camera one evening to look, I was not disappointed!  I really loved how the light seemed to single out this one tree, and the contrast of the infrared helped emphasis this whole thing.

More next week!

–Dan Thompson