Secret Garden, IR

infrared flash

I'm cobbling together an infrared flash. There are a lot of ways to do this, but after shooting in the bat house and some other glass enclosed areas in the zoo - I can see that for sure you need to boost the infrared light levels. The basic technique is to put infrared #87 gel over the flash. Weegee from what I've read used flash bulbs that were coated to absorb everything but infrared light. I've also been studying the infrared shots of Minor White (which are wonderful). What I'm seeing is that you want to minimize as much as possible the elements in the image to somewhat known IR entities. A good example is a shot of Poplar Trees, New York State. Maybe that's true for any shot, I don't know.

The flash should be ready tomorrow. I guess Buddy will be my first subject. He works for scale.