Helsby Hill

Had an afternoon out with a fellow Photograhy Club member, R. I have been up this way plenty of times on my mountain bike in the 90's, but never with my Pentax (four years old this September). It was R's first time up here too.

The views are always spectacular.
Shown here is North Wales on the LHS, the M56 running across the image, Shell Oil refinery centre top, Ellesmere Port at the end of the railway track & the Mersey/Liverpool on the RHS horizon. The village of Helsby is directly below.

Although the weather today was very hot & sunny, it was rather breezy up here making it very tricky to keep the tripod still (30s exposure) in this shot, hence the fuzzy trees in the bottom corners. The sun and warmth was just perfect for Infrared photo shooting - something I have missed for sometime now..............

For those who are unfamiliar with IR photography, this is typical of what one can produce with very little post production on the pc (if you exclude minor curve. saturation adjustments). The three images are all products of the same RAW file taken with a Hoya R72 filter.

The top one is the "original", ie out of the camera image with the White Balance set on the "sun-lit grass" prior to taking the picture. This is typical of my Pentax K-m (orange wintery sky, pastel blue grass/leaves etc).

The middle image was coverted to BW in Pentax Laboratory where a cyan filter was layered on top of the image giving you the jet black sky & "white, snowy" grass. Apart from bending the curves, no further adjustments were made to this shot.

And finally, this is the "PS processed" image most people are used to seeing when talking about IR photography. If you compare this to the original, one could argue that a negative is produced here. This is partly true as the red & blue channels were "switched" in the (jpeg) Channel Mixer in PS giving you the blue sky. Further adjustments were made in the selective colour (saturation).

I tend to like the BW Infrared as I enjoy adding a timeless look to my photos, but the colour versions I also like. I tend to prefer the orange sky/blue grass look, but have grown to like the "Red/Blue Switch look. Sometimes this can be a bit of a headache when choosing 1, 2 or 3 to please a judge on the competition front at my Photography Club.

I have always found IR photograhphy really fascinating ever since the sales guy, who I bought my camera from, introduced me to it (he happened to be starting out on IR at the time). It always throws supprises, even after doing it for 3 years, because we cannot see in IR, nor can we see throught the view finder when the filter is fitted. So you get the idea in the difficulty in achieving IR photos!

I appreciate any comments/feedback on the above images. Possibly stating your prefered IR look. Even if you don't like them (I don't mind, honestly)!

This is a selection of 20 (out of about 80) photos taken on this gloriously sunny day.
Enjoy ;-)