I have been making plans for my Civil War photo project and mapping out the locations I want to visit over the coming months. In preparation for my upcoming photo shoots I took the opportunity this past weekend to bring my Infrared converted camera to Harper's Ferry. My goal was to get my eye trained to start thinking in infrared. Shooting in IR is a similar process to shooting in black and white. You need to see the world differently. You are looking for contrast and form rather than color. With infrared you have the same challenge of black and white but the added challenge of how the contrast and coloring of the scene is affected by the infrared process. Clouds in the sky become more intense and any green foliage will be shown as white. One of the advantages of shooting in infrared is you can shoot in the middle of the day in full sun rather than during the golden hours of the day.
The top of the hill at Harper's Ferry is a great cemetery that contains grave markers going back hundreds of years. When we reached this area I took out my camera to create a series of images from the cemetery.
The IR process gives the images a moody and surreal look that I'm trying to achieve for my project.
Many of the graver markers are from the Civil War era and this land was held by both the Union and Confederate troops several times during the Civil War.
I don't expect any of these images to show up in my project, but I like how they came out and I'm becoming more motivated to get working on my project again.
