Surrey Sculpture Park - Infrared

The Sculpture Park is a large collection of sculptures, almost all of which are for sale, located in an arboretum near Godalming in Surrey.  One of its big attractions is the clever and sympathetic locating of the sculptures within the site.

I have been here before, a couple of years ago, but after my original bank holiday Saturday plans fell through, I thought it was time for another visit,  The advantage of a selling exhibition is that it does change over time, and some of the notable pieces from last time had gone (like the driftwood dragon that cost more than my house).  Of course many were the same.  And whilst it was spring last time and summer this, the trees had the same full green leaf.  So there was the danger of getting the same kind of image.  If only I had some way of doing something different with all that green...something I didn't have last time...wait a minute...I do!  And after that, the day wrote itself.  That's the thing when you have a shiny new hammer.  Every problem looks like a nail.

Stevington Windmill

Time for a quick break from all the infrared.  The recent very windy weather was a good opportunity for a little 10-stop photography.  For a location, I headed to the windmill at Stevington.  Even though it's a very photogenic structure and only half an hour away from me, it's not somewhere that I had visited before.  It's the kind of place that would make a good subject for a 4 seasons project, so I may be back again.

 

Horsey Windpump in IR

On the way back from Happisburgh, we stopped at Horsey Windpump for a few shots.  Again I took both full colour and IR images.  However, the normal colour images are not that interesting, so here are some of the IR shots.

 

Happisburgh

A couple of weeks ago I visited Happisburgh (for those who don't speak Norfolk, that's pronounced Haze-bruh).  This is an area where the power of coastal erosion is on clear display.  The soft cliffs are in full retreat, many houses have been lost to the sea and it's a matter of when, not if, for the others.  We arrived at high tide and couldn't get near the old wooden sea defences that we were hoping to 10-stop.  Whilst trying to find other routes down to the beach, we walked over what had once been a static caravan park.  The satellite view on Google maps showed dozens of vans and a u-shaped service road.  All that remained was the odd broken caravan and two stubby sections of road, each ending at the cliff.

At least the Lighthouse is still there. And easy to get to.  I had seen many images of it shot from a field.  The field typically containing ripe wheat or barley.  I was expecting a bit of a hike to find that viewpoint, but it was actually right by the carpark.  What Will Cheung calls a Cavalier shot, because you can take it out of the window of your Vauxhall Cavalier. 

This year's crop was sugarbeat.  Less interesting than wheat or barley for normal shots, but superb for IR

 

Wimpole in Infrared

Just before my birthday, back in May, I took my old Canon 40D to Advanced Camera Services in Watton, to get it converted to infrared.  Two months later, I finally got it back.  For it's first outing, I took it to Wimpole.  The forecast promised a day of sunshine and cloud, which would have been ideal.  Sadly, there was a little more cloud than sun, but it was still good enough for a first try.  I had researched which of my Canon lens would be best to use to ensure no 'hotspots' and opted to stick with my 24mm EF-S STM.

Next came the image processing.  This has been something of a steep learning curve, but thanks to Ian's Digital Techniques group notes and several YouTube tutorials, I am getting the hang of it.

First off, I went for some simple mono conversions.

Next, for a couple of the images that had no sky, I played with the hue and saturations in Lightroom alone.
 

Finally, I dived into 'channel swapping', using Photoshop to change reds to blues, and blues to reds.  These would have been stronger with a better sky, but I am happy with them for a first go.

Flower Abstracts at Wimpole

Whenever I go to Wimpole Hall, I like to spend some time in the walled garden.  There is usually something worth shooting.  I particularly enjoy taking minimal depth of field abstract close-ups of the flowers.