I had been planning to save Wednesday for a photo-drive. I haven’t been out using my Infrared converted camera for quite a while and the past few days had been infrared perfectly sunny.
So where to go? I thought about Wells Gray Park, But that would be too long a day and I had just been to the Salmon Arm Pier so that left driving south. I have been thinking about making an overnight trip to Oliver. However, that would have to wait.
I decided to drive down along Highway 97 through Westwold and Falkland and then the turn on to the meandering Salmon Creek and go to Armstrong.
I have always liked that winding road to the tiny village of Armstrong. There is so much to see and photograph. Over the years that I have been pointing a camera on that drive the roadside subjects have changed making new things see and photograph.
Armstrong is a short leisurely hour drive from Pritchard and I like that bustling little place with its train tracks that were built in 1890 running through the middle of town. My favourite place to stop and photograph (more times that I can remember) is the wooden visitor centre that the tree-lined tracks run beside is always waiting for me to photograph.
Unlike the past few days, Wednesday was not clear and blue. The sky was grey and filled with high clouds.
Despite those grey clouds the day seemed pretty bright so I took my IR camera outside before I left home, made a few tests, and to my pleasure there was enough infrared light coming through the clouds to brighten the foliage and the cloudy sky looked great.
Infrared is a different way to visually discuss a subject, whether staying with the false colour my converted camera produces or converting to plain black and white the images that show the world in a very different way. Black and white can be dramatic or subtle depending on how the light is recorded and the false colour is always unworldly. (Anyway, that’s my word for it.)
My converted camera captures the IR wavelengths of light that fall outside the visible spectrum. Depending on the “filter’ that has been put in the camera when it is converted the initial image can go from contrasting black and white to the unusual colours my camera produces that are referred to by those that write about infrared photography as “false colour”.
My IR camera gives me images that I can load onto my computer and be as creative as I want - manipulating the deep blues or reds as I please and will end up with many versions of both colour and black and white of each image to pick from.
I stopped several times along my drive to make photographs of old buildings with wide fields in the background, but it was Armstrong that I wanted to walk around in and it was there that I spent the better part of an hour walking, photographing and just sitting quietly enjoying the sights as the light poked through the clouds that had become perfect for my wide images of that photogenic town centre.
I wanted to end this with a quote and I found this one by French environmentalist, activist, journalist and photographer, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, “The earth is art, the photographer is only a witness.”
Stay safe and be creative. These are my thoughts for this week. Contact me at www.enmanscamera.com or emcam@telus.net.
