Sketches and Studies by Craig Houghton

Craig Houghton September 7th, 2007

I’ve been meaning to post about this, but I’ve been ill. I find the nearly visible endlessly fascinating, so I’m sure I’ll return to this topic soon.

Near-infrared light is just beyond visible red light. With wavelengths of 780nm and up, it’s a spectrum we’re just not built to see. Well, there is a bit of an overlap, but the visible light around us overpowers the narrow band we can see without technological assistance. Near-infrared is the channel-changing bright light your remote control shines at your tv box. Take a look. If you can’t see the light when button-mashing (and, you shouldn’t be able to), look at it through your digital camera viewfinder. Note that this isn’t heat-based thermal vision and it isn’t infrared boosting night-vision, but it’s very cool.

See the links below for more on this, but the short story is that most digital cameras have a filter to block infrared light. They’re not out to spoil your fun — it helps to improve your pictures. However, it’s often a weak filter that still lets through some infrared light. However, whatever filter is there still acts like a pair of infrared-blocking sun-glasses, so you’ll have to use a looong manual shutter speed or set your camera to nightshot.

Learn more:

Infrared goggles ($10)- milk that narrow band of near-infrared that we can actually see (yes. they work.)

same idea with less talk, more pictures

use old film/exposed negatives to make an IR filter - that works, but the $30 dollar filter I bought for my digital camera worked far better. try the home-made filter method if you can’t buy a real IR filter for your camera. there are some tutorials out there (and there are many) that use floppy disks instead of exposed negatives. the floppies I used just wasted my time and made everything rather dark and smoky

remove the internal IR filter to increase sensitivity - most digital cameras (and probably webcams too) will do just fine with their internal filter intact, so I wouldn’t reach for that screwdriver yet

As for me, I’m very happy with my purchase of an Opteka 58mm 720nm Infrared Filterfor my Sony DSC-H1 digital camera. I’m sure there are other more IR sensitive cameras out there, because I have to keep the camera shutter open quite a while to let in enough IR light for a decent picture. This usually means about 2 seconds of exposure (auto white balance with manual shutter of 2 seconds). Of course, I have to use a tripod at that setting. And, (assuming you’ve been doing some reading elsewhere) no I haven’t seen clothing turn to Saran wrap. Then again, I haven’t really tried, wouldn’t recommend it, and doubt that someone, sun-bathers aside, could hold perfectly still for the required 2-4 seconds. Here’s what I have seen of the ‘invisible’ and beautiful world of near-infrared.

(all photos here taken with my sony dsc-h1 and opteka ir filter)

the photos often look best when tweaked to grayscale. before adjusting, you can get some funky colors

chlorophyll, like in these normally dark leaves, shows up as a strong white in near-infrared

it’s hard to read this photo, but the tree in the center here is a purple plum. the leaves are very, very dark, but they’re white when using a near-infrared filter. the sky also turns dark unless it’s overcast. barely visible clouds and rainbows are easier to see as well.

in near-infrared, a clear sky can be dark like this without after-tweaking

infrared in grayscale (at top) versus visible light in grayscale (below)

the dark plum looks almost like a negative, but it’s not. here’s the visible (bottom) full color along with what an actual negative would look like (at top) just as a reminder. notice that it’s quite different from the infrared atop the first pair.

Also, I really do recommend the $10 goggles (cost a bit more with mail-order parts). When the light is strong (noon till 3 or so on a bright day), it’s a world of pink and white leaves, dark networks of branches, and black skies. We only see a narrow band, but I know it’s the real thing as the plum tree turns a white I could never get with normally-visible light interfering.

• techniques , photography , digital , plants , media
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Craig Houghton June 4th, 2007

Morphing has a place of honor up there with the lens-flare filter, but I think it works in this video. There’s more morph than portrait time, but that ties the video together. And, bear in mind that this isn’t exactly representative of all female portraiture throughout the years. I think the selection bias fell heavily on the side of morph-friendly look-alikes. For example, he could have picked works that best represented common themes present in the depiction of woman for that particular period. Either way, a monotone string of masterfully painted pin-ups works too.

Women in Art - 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art

I think the poster has a thing for people sequences: Eggman’s Youtube Vid Gallery

• other artists , media , portraits , vids
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Craig Houghton February 4th, 2007

Let’s talk about something with absolutely no weight or substance. Let’s talk about Newsweek. Here’s the blurb for their cover story:

“Paris, Britney, Lindsay & Nicole: They seem to be everywhere and they may not be wearing underwear. Tweens adore them and teens envy them. But are we raising a generation of ‘prosti-tots’? “

A far direr indicator is that a legitimate news outlet like MSNBC made this sexist opinion piece from Newsweek their front page article. More or less, Newsweek just called a generation of young women whores. Do they really think so little of women that they’d expect a whole generation to emulate Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan just because the msm assumes it’s their mission to plaster the front covers with images of empty aristiocratic debauchery?

Newsweek even helped to bury their reputation entirely by including a 15 page spread of “bad girls.”

Right now, the U.S. is preparing to knock down the already tottering Jenga tower of international stability in order to score strategy points and barrels of oil in the Middle East as the collective jaw of the scientific community drops before the staggering evidence that man made climate change is going to radically transform our planet. Right now, damning evidence in the Libby trial seems to implicate both the vice-president and the president. But, right now, Newsweek thought it would be great to instead keep alive the age-old premise that failing to meet some standard of purity makes one a “bad-girl.”

An apt commenter on the article called Newsweek on the underlying premise:

“Labeling any female a prostitute is a millennia old device that some men and most religions have used to control women. Then when women use the label it is women-on-women violence. That should be the discussion; that and why Newsweek chose to use the word. Newsweek kindly explain, please.”

Way to go, Newsweek.

• women , media
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