Outdoor Photographer – September 2019

background. I also didn’t want the noise
that a high ISO would cause. So I put the
camera on a tripod, set the ISO to 400,
stopped the lens down to ƒ/16 and chose
an exposure time of half a second—a far
cry from the 1/125 to 1/250 sec. range of
typical bright-light infrared shooting. The
slow speed blurred the relatively calm
water enough to “smear” the colors of the
reflection but kept the floating leaves sharp.
I was pretty surprised by what my cam-
era’s LCD showed me. The RAW capture
was darker and less saturated than the
image here, so after lightening it, I used
Photoshop’s individual color saturation
sliders to selectively increase the intensity
of the different colors in the reflection—
the orange from the sky and the blues
and greens of the foliage. (The natural
yellow of some of the floating leaves may
be due to their loss of chlorophyll, which
is what reflects near-infrared radiation
from plants.) The result has the feeling of
a true fall sunset in New England, except
that the sun was long gone.

Cypress Tendons,
Florida Everglades
I often use my color infrared camera to
shoot reflections in swamps. They offer
a dense scheme of visual layers and a
complex color palette, one created by
the superimposition of the lighter, green-
ish-blue foliage and the reddish sky on
the rich, tannin-stained water and silty
bottom. But when you expose for what’s
above the water—here, a bald cypress
trunk—those shadows and reflections
look very dark in the RAW capture. The
RAW file’s buried information came to
the rescue in this image, allowing me
to recover plenty of detail from them.
To start, I used sliders in Nikon Capture
NX-D to pull in both the highlights and
the shadows. The shadows were still
pretty flat and murky going into Photo-
shop, though.
To bring out the reflections of the
tree branches and brighten the water-
darkened bits of sky between them, I used
the on-the-fly masking capabilities of the
Viveza plug-in for Photoshop. By drop-
ping control points in various parts of the
reflection and adjusting the size of the con-
centric area they affect, I was able not only
to brighten it but also to locally increase

contrast and saturation, both of which are

reduced when you substantially lighten a

dark area. Along with brightness, contrast

and saturation, the sliders attached to each

control point allowed me to adjust indi-

vidual colors to make the reflection look

consistent throughout. Without Viveza, it

would have taken dozens of layer masks

to do this.

Tree At Sunrise, Bosque Del

Apache National Wildlife Refuge

Distant birds take only a supporting role

in this image from the Bosque, wintering

grounds for flocks of thousands. Despite

appearances, the day dawned with low

clouds that kept direct sun from lighting

up the scene. The light was so dim, in

fact, that I had to set an ISO of 1600 and

open up a bit from my preferred aperture

of ƒ/11 to ƒ/8. I used a shutter speed of

1/90 sec., fast enough to freeze some-

thing moving in the far distance.

Infrared saved the day, turning the

subject back into an intensely colored

sunrise. The foliage at the base of the

tree was unexpectedly drab though, so

once the image was in Photoshop, I used

Viveza to add green to it. I placed control

points at strategic spots along the bottom

of the image, expanded the circle just

enough to cover the foliage, then turned

up the green slider in the control stem

that extends from the point. I personally

have no qualms about such manipulation,

since I’ve never thought of myself as a

photographic realist!

Fairy Stone State Park, Virginia

Yet another case in which late-day light

was reinforced by color infrared’s red-

dening, this image gets its mirrored

effect from my having scrambled down

the riverbank at a bridge and shot from

a lower position. That perspective and

its more glancing angle strengthened the

reflection, helping to make the landforms

appear to float. It’s always a cool trick to

show the tree line in a reflection but crop

it out of the top of the frame; in this case,

infrared’s strong red sky is almost entirely

in the reflection, with just a little bit of the

real thing at the upper left.

The image took a lot of local work,

however. There was too much blue in the

brush at the top of the frame—and in its

reflection—so I used Saturation and Selec-

tive Color controls to make it greener. The

sun was relatively low, and the parts of

the riverbanks and surrounding ground

it couldn’t reach were flat-looking, so I

used Viveza control points to add local

contrast and density to them. The area

on the right was very bright, so I burned

it in, again with control points. (Color

infrared can be a very contrasty medium.)

The reflection in the water faded almost

to black toward the bottom, so I opened it

up and increased its contrast, which made

the trees’ reflections stand out all the way

to the edge of the frame.

Cypress Knees, Avery

Island, Louisiana

When I shot this picture on Louisi-

ana’s Avery Island, home of the Tabas-

co-making McIlhenny family, my

first thought was that I’d picked up

the reflection of its famous sauce. But

it was the usual red-hot infrared sky

reflected in the pools of a murky bayou,

which I cropped tight to place atten-

tion on the knobby “knees” that sprout

up from bald cypress tree roots. (They

never grow into trees!) I shot at a fair

distance from the subject with a 125mm

focal length, both to flatten it and to get

the more glancing angle I needed for

a good reflection. Given the relatively

long focal length, I stopped down to

ƒ/19 to ensure enough depth of field,

which required a shutter speed of 1/45

sec., tripod-mounted at ISO 400.

I toned down the red sky’s flaming

reflection in Photoshop, using the red

slider in Hue/Saturation, to give the image

a more naturalistic, sunset-like feeling.

Again, color infrared renders foliage with

a blue-green range in the RAW capture,

as shown in the leaves here. By contrast,

the cypress knees had more of a pure

blue cast that reminded me of the blue

you see in shadows and open shade on a

clear day, especially visible early and late.

So I actually used the blue slider in Hue/

Saturation to increase the blue, creating

a nice color contrast with the orange of

the reflection. OP

See more of Russell Hart’s work at

russellhartphoto.com.

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