POTW 26 April 2020 - Daffodil

[Mike Farley]

I have got behind with the posting of photo of the week images although the project itself remains on track. There are limitations due to the Covid-19 restrictions but I am doing my best to work around them.

This shot of a daffodil was taken in my garden with my infrared camera and adjusted during processing to eliminate the surrounding distractions and add the false colour. I had been able to isolate the flower from the background by using the black side of my 5-in-1 reflector, so my compositional changes mainly consisted of cropping and darkening either side of the bloom.

[Mike Farley]

I thought people might like to see the original image as shot before I undertook any processing. The only change I have made at this point is the application of my standard infrared Lightroom camera profile to remove a significant red cast. Unlike some other Raw editors, Adobe Camera Raw which is the underlying Raw processor for both Lightroom and Photoshop, does not correctly apply the camera's white balance setting to infrared shots. Most of the information in an infrared image is in the red channel and that is what ACR uses, hence the overall red hue. To overcome the problem, I have had to create a custom profile so that I have a usable starting point.

Infrared light is beyond the visible spectrum, hence the initial absence of colour. It is the reason why many infrared shots are presented as monchrome in their final form. I introduce false colour at various stages during post capture processing.

Daffodil as ashot

Daffodil as shot.jpg (90.65 KiB) Viewed 1643 times