Images

Peru 2015 – Bird

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I think this might be a caracara. One of the difficult things with doing this kind of photography is that, because of the movement of the boat, you have to shoot at a high shutter speed. Since the animals are moving, you need a small aperture to increase the depth of field. This helps keep it in focus if it moves too quickly as you focus. However, to shoot at high speed and small aperture, you have to boost the ISO level to where it’s unacceptably sharp … or deliberately underexpose. Underexposing works well, but when you bring it back up to being bright enough to see things, the colours are off.

So you switch to black and white.

Infrared River Zoo – Gate

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For some reason, my wide angle lens flares a lot more under infrared light than under regular light. Sometimes this ruins a shot, but sometimes it adds a bit of mystery, like here.

One thing I’d like to try eventually is to use a tripod system to overlap an infrared shot with a normal light shot. For example, this could be a colour photo outside of the gateway, but only infrared within, or vice versa. I think it could be a neat (if prone to over-use) effect, but I’d need a different infrared camera to give it a try.

Peru 2015 – Frog

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As the trip was largely boat-based, going from the big boat where we slept to little skiffs for excursions, and back, the opportunity to see animals on land was rare. So I was lucky to finally see one of the frogs with transparent stomach skin. I wish I’d been able to move it into a better position, but it hopped away really quickly and I only had the time for two shots.

InfraRed River Zoo

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Another infrared photo. I’m still learning what this form can and cannot do. A lot of buildings look very interesting, and very creepy, in the infrared spectrum. As I said to a friend of mine, it’s almost like humans don’t engage in aesthetic design for spectra they can’t see. Still, you can’t deny that infrared images are very striking.

I do think this shot needs a clown though.