I've been going insane trying to understand just what Todd Johnson is doing with his photos. I think many others have as well. He is doing something called "Near Infrared compressed tone images". You'll see nothing on the web about it really. Check out his site and look at his work. Very impressive. www.tjweddings.com. Also, read about his "photographic style" and he hints at what he's doing.
If someone can help me understand this process, I'd be thrilled.
Here is a hint from his site for some of what he has done apparently. Check it out!
Q: Your images have a very unique look--the composition and lighting is great--but I have never seen that glowing feel or the ethereal colors...how do you capture that?
A: I wish there was a really simple answer that I could give you, but it is a combination of 18 years of lighting, camera technique and digital imaging that go into my images. To help you develop your own style, let me tell you about my image philosophy first. What I am doing is trying to reproduce what I felt at the wedding, not just what was seen by everyone. The literal documenting of the wedding doesn't take radically uncommon talent given today's camera technology. The energy, the love and the connections between people, the smallest detail are all very important but easily missed if the photographer is not dedicated to going beyond reproducing, but finding and creating images that tell the complete story. The point is no camera/software/plugin/printer maker is going to know your vision better than you, so why take their version of a look or feel, after all, they are engineers first, not story tellers or image makers.
I guess this goes without saying, but like to start with an image that has an interesting composition and lighting. For me, a small light source close to the lens is my least favorite, so I really try to avoid on camera or bracket flash. I use a combination of filtering at the lens and custom white balance so that I capture a file that is close to infra-red but still has the full spectrum of visible light and color so I can make a "normal" looking image. The next step goes into the 3D world of animation. Maya and some others can work directly with HDRI files (high dynamic range images, which will be used in the next generation of digital cameras instead of RAW) , where you break an image down to it's elements, the image is separated into its lighting information, reflection, color shaders and density. I apply this principal to work on the image in black and white, get the image the way I want by creating a series of channels and layers to reduce contrast in some areas and increase it in others to direct the eye through the image. Then I bring very selective elements of the color back on a series of layers where I think it is important.
A lot of people ask about plug-ins, I started doing digital imaging on a $1.2 million quantel paintbox in the 1980s, the software was very limited and there were no plug-ins or actions, which really taught me to think like a painter, I had to rely on my "inner plug-in" which is still my preference. It is fun to look at all the plug-ins and actions today, but the only one I use is quantum mechanics, a huge time saver for reducing digital noise (or film grain if you are scanning) info can be found at http://www.camerabits.com/pages/QM2.html
read the whole thing... what i got from it is that he is using filters to achieve a lot of his "look." although he does have on IR converted Kodak in his bag.
I saw that he does have an IR converted camera as well. Do you think he's using that most of the time? How do you get what he calls a somewhat "normal" looking image from them, and how would you bring back color from that image?
I'm a newcomer to photoshop. I switched over from being a video pro to still work a year ago.
