False Color Infrared Brown Pelican

[Mark Hilliard]

This is a FAUX COLOR INFRARED image of a Brown Pelican on a piling in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. The FAUX COLOR INFRARED is process wherein you take a standard infrared image and swap the red and blue channels. This gives a IR image where the blues of the sky tend to stand out in a overall monochromatic image. Sometimes depending on the intensity and direction of the light the effect can be more or less pronounced. In this case the blues tend to overwelm the B&W portions of the image but it still gives a nice overall image.

Canon 5D INFRARED ONLY BODY
Canon 100-400 L/IS at 400
Hand held
f/5.6
1/250s
ISO 650

[Lana Hays]

Welcome, Mark
An interesting setup for the 5D....and not one that I'm very familiar with but the colors are pleasing. I'm pondering what might be a slightly different composition. I might try to crop some off the bottom to put more emphasis on the sharp pelican at the top and less on the so much that is OOF at the bottom. I would have also experimented with different angles and DOF. I hope that you post more images with different colors to see how this works.

[Jim Neiger]

Hi Mark,

I am not familiar with the IR setup so I can't give you much feedback on that. I would suggest a horizontal crop to eliminate the bottom portion of the image. I think the oof birds, pilings, and buildings are distracting. The verticle would have worked well too if cropped much tighter to eliminate the distractions from the image.

[Carl Krucke]

I really like this shot Mark. The artful composition of a scene, rather than just a pelican, is refreshing. Makes me feel more like I'm there, experiencing it. Rather than distracting, for me the other elements conjure up the sounds and smells, by association. It's obvious who the subject is by the dynamic difference in sharpness. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the colors are close enough to have been normally achieved, yet different enough to add interest. Great work!

[Mark Hilliard]

Thanks for the comments. This is exactly what I was shooting for. More of a location with a bird than just the bird. You really couldnt tell it was an IR shot UNLESS you looked closely at the Pelican which is pure black and white!