The Making of Spirit of the Forest

This is a different kind of image for me. It represents a departure from my normal, more straightforward landscape style, and yet it still fits in with my regular landscape work and has been very popular at my art shows.

It’s one of an ongoing series of images that are taken with a camera that can record the infrared spectrum as well as visible light. The resulting effect is images that are both recognizable yet a bit surreal, because the camera is recording, in part, what our naked eye can’t see.

This process requires a lot more work on my part after capturing them with the camera. What I get from the camera has a very red and orange color cast that requires a lot of work on the computer to adjust the colors and create something more recognizable. Often, I like to convert these images mostly to black-and-white, while leaving color in the sky. And even though the process is more intensive, it also leaves room for lots of surprises. Sometimes images that I think will be great candidates for this approach never really seem to come together, while others, like this one, have that right combination of light and other conditions that create a certain magic.

The photo was taken at one of my favorite fall photography locations, Kebler Pass, near Crested Butte CO. While I was out doing some fall photography, I decided to try out my infrared camera. In one of my favorite Aspen groves where the trees tower over the viewer tall and straight, growing to incredible heights for this type of tree, I pointed my camera upwards to capture the feeling of being amongst these giants. The bright sunshine poured in through the tree canopy and lit up the thick ferns nestled at their base. The brilliant tree canopy contrasts with the blue sky to create an illusion that makes it sometimes hard for the viewer to tell exactly what they are seeing there.

One of the characteristics of infrared photography is that often, when rendered in black-and-white, greenery and foliage give off this bright glow because of the infrared heat, and this turns white in the final image. That is certainly the case here. Sometimes this gets mistaken for snow or frost, but it’s actually the sun lighting up the foliage, and the camera recording the infrared heat coming off it. I used to get this effect many years ago with black-and-white infrared film, so I love re-creating that effect now, with the added ability to retain color in the sky.

Another aspect of this type of photography is that certain lenses create lens flare, or hotspots, that they would not normally do. In this image, there’s a subtle little magenta glow near the center of the image created by the lens. I chose to leave that in. It reminds me of stories that I’ve heard about spirits appearing as a floating orb of light. Thus, I gave the image its name, “Spirit of the Forest”.

You can find this and other images of this type in my Infrared Gallery.