Working with IR Photography

I recently purchased an IR lens filter from B&H Photo, with the desire to begin exploring infrared photography. Since I left high school, I have not really spent time going back to the basic technical aspects of photography. But to justify the purchase of the lens and to really master IR photographs requires me relearning what I used to know about light and filters.

As the example photograph demonstrates, the image that shows up on the back of the digital camera removes the lower color wavelengths of light, leaving only about 50% of the red spectrum visible and the lower 700nm+ ranges of the infrared. I now have to readjust the techniques I learned so many years ago when I first started with black & white film. Contrasts are different, and exposure times are extended. Adding additional difficultly is the fact that with so little light coming through the lens, autofocusing becomes problematic. But the results, when things work, are extremely interesting.

Image 1: Sunset at Lafayette Resevoir. Image 2 & Image 3: Afternoon Jogger at Lafayette Resevoir.

Finding the Simple Beauty of Nature

Last week, I had a couple spare hours to visit the UC Davis Arboretum. Though my camera battery was almost dead, I was able to get some decent images. The following thumbnail (click here to see large image) is the first of the images. Over the next week more of them will follow.

While I was walking, I was again struck by how much of noticing the beauty around me was a matter of perspective. The flower pictured here, was away from the rest of the similar type flowers, close enough to the walking path that I was surprised it hadn’t gotten trampled. It looked rather dismal, until I got down on my stomach and looked at the flower from ground level.

If I may anthropormorphize for a moment, the change in perspective altered the flower from the solitary loner who just didn’t get that the best place to grow was back with the rest of the pack; it altered the flower to the trailblazing maverick that demanded attention from the passerby by separating itself from the common and declaring this is where I will grow.

There is an old colloquialism about how it’s not the circumstances in our life we control, it’s only our reactions to them that can be controlled. The greater truth is that often our initial reactions are not even under our direct control. But we can change our perspective: get down on the ground and look at the circumstances from another viewpoint; or climb up high and try and look at the bigger picture of life.

Is Peace the Natural State of the Planet?

I don’t really have an answer to this question, but I find myself wondering this more and more as each year passes. I have heard friends and colleagues answer this question differently. For the most part, it seems their answers have more to do with their individual personalities than with the actual state of the world.

I never bought the adage “Those who fail to learn from history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them.” It makes complex societal behavior far too simplistic, while simultaneously attributing ignorance as the cause of failure. As if smart knowledgeable people don’t make mistakes.

For some people, it seems more understandable to ascribe a sort of benevolent impetus to Nature; for others they attribute a naturalistic progression/development of planets and species from simple to complex, then ultimately to disorder. Regardless of which position one is closer to—the caring overseer that wants the best for us, or the impartial system of evolutionary progression and descent into physical chaos—it is the question of ‘What next?’ that all humans are left with.

Do we have some sort to leave the planet and society in a better state than the way in which we found it? If so, then is it better to pursue an achievable improvement in the individual time each of us has before we die, or is it better to strive for the long-term improvement which may not be achievable in any one life-time?

Having a peaceful planet is a goal that appears to be much longer-term project than can be accomplished in any one lifetime. The cyclic nature of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from cease-fire to armed conflict illustrates a true peace must outlast the generation that starts it. If the accords made that settled the IRA-UK conflict last another few decades, then that situation can serve as an example of the establishment of modern-era peace.

It may well be that while peace is the natural state of the planet, it is not the natural state of society. In other words, the species on the planet will come to a homeostatic balance of creation, propagation, and destruction. It could be the establishment and maintenance of societies that disrupts that balance, since each society competes with all the others.

Competition between societies can be civil until one society begins (or attempts to begin) the destruction of another. At that point, the conflicts almost always include some level of violence. The attempt during the 20^th century by democratic societies to destroy communistic societies spilled into violence repeatedly, particularly in the Middle East and SouthEast Asia. The establishment of Western Society in the Americas, led to conflicts with the existing native societies once the Native Americans realized that the intent of the incoming settlers was to replace the current American societal models, with ones from Europe.

I think there is something intriguing to this idea, that I’ll have to address in more depth at another time; but suffice to say that while I don’t have a definitive answer to the post-initiating question, my current working answer is “Not exactly. Sans society, peace can be the natural state of the planet; with society, peace cannot.”