Fun with infrared light and modern architecture

Over the past few years, I’ve dabbled here and there with infrared (IR) photography, but didn’t take it very seriously until I recently took an online course in the subject from Derrick Story (a.k.a. The Nimble Photographer). If you’re at all interested in IR photography, I can highly recommend the seminar — you’ll learn a lot from the instruction, and quite a bit as well from your fellow students.

In particular, one of my fellow students recommended taking IR photos in office parks with mature vegetation. You can, he said, get some nice results with the architecture, windows, and greenery.

So as my first example of this subject matter, here’s the Pacific Western Bank building in the Denver Tech Center (Denver, Colorado):

PWB iPhone

The above is a quick reference photo I took with my iPhone — it’s poorly framed but still a good comparison for the images below.

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Holiday colors

One of the privileges of photographic life near Denver, Colorado is that you get some uniquely colorful holiday lights to play with.  In particular, the Denver City and County building traditionally is bathed in a very… unrestrained choice of colored lights at night for the season.  Call it gaudy, call it exuberant, call it tacky, the bottom line is that it’s a photographer magnet (we just can’t help ourselves).

Best of all, the folks running the building now turn off the street lights on Bannock Street in front of it every Sunday night when the building’s lit up — this makes it so much easier to capture the building in all its highly-saturated glory.  So last Sunday, I got bundled up to handle our recent frigid night temperatures (clear sky, 17 degrees Fahrenheit) and went to town on the place.

Festive colors

The above photo was taken from near the end of the building’s south wing, if you were curious.  This is definitely my favorite photo of the set, I really like how the snow in the foreground brings some of the chill to the viewer. Continue reading