Photo Walk - The Sky Garden

It's been way too long since I've made one of these 'photo walk' posts for IR. I have taken many infra-red photos while exploring lately, so I hope to do more posts like this soon. Here's something a little different from central London - 'The Sky Garden', at 20 Fenchurch Street.

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/60th, f/5.6, iso 160 - B+W 093 filter

The building is otherwise known as the 'Walkie Talkie'. If you're not familiar with the name, it's not that weird, most of the skyscrapers here have nicknames (Cheese Grater, Gherkin etc. - shown above). This is one of the newest and it's infamous for melting things when it was first built (with it's parabolic mirror surface you see here). It has a lovely viewing deck on the top, as well as a bar, a garden (of course) and a couple of restaurants. It's free to get in, you just need to book in advance, queue for about 30 mins and bring photo ID with your ticket. Then the 'standard' metal detector shenanigans. OK that sounds like a pain, but it's worth it I promise.

We booked an appointment to visit this place a while ago and when it finally came time to go the Carl Zeiss Sonnar FE 55mm f/1.8 lens had just turned up. I'd spend a day or so with it, so of course I was itching to take more photos. All but one of the photos you'll see here was taken with it, so I will put details underneath each shot, as well as exposure info, so you can tell which it is.

Above: This first shot was taken from the top of the 'Monument'. It cost £4 to climb this tiny spiral staircase. It's not for the claustrophobic, but I appreciated this higher angle. I photoshoped a crane out on the right side of this image because it was rather distracting.
Below: The next shot was taken from the ruined church - 'Saint Dunstan In The East', which is a beautiful place to visit in it's own right. I will show a shot looking down into here later on.

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/100th, f/5.6, iso 100 - B+W 093 filter

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/60th, f/4, iso 200 - B+W 093 filter

Above: From the north of the building you're surrounded by a few skyscrapers. On the right here is the famous 'Lloyds Building'. I love this street for its eclectic mix of architecture styles. It was good before 20 Fenchurch Street was built and now it's even more of a mix.
Below: More older buildings, with some lovely details, on 'Lower Thames Street'. The details you see on this side of the 'Walkie Talkie' are shapes to break up the reflections and make them less damaging from that magnifying curve.

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/60th, f/8, iso 100 - B+W 093 filter

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/60th, f/8, iso 100 - B+W 093 filter

Above: Here's a modern buildings on the south east side.

     From Up Top
Here are some shot from inside 'The Sky Garden'. There is quite a big area to move around up here. It has plants beside the steps that go up each side of the room. These steps span three floors (35th to the 37th) and give access to the restaurants and some extra seating.

Sony 28/2 - 1/40th, f/4, iso 160 - B+W 093 filter

Above: This is from the back of the building, on a highest level. The main, open viewing deck at the front is on the lower 35th floor. I switched to the Sony 28mm f/2 lens for a couple of shots, just to show the interior better. This was the only one that I liked. In hindsight I wish I'd taken more from this lens and more colour shots with it too, but I was a little too eager to use the Zeiss lens and get as many samples as possible.

From this point on the images looking down into the city are taken from the main viewing platform, on the 35th floor (looking south).

Below: This first shot shows the 'curvy' little town hall building and H.M.S. Belfast, on the south bank of the Thames.

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/60th, f/4, iso 400 - B+W 093 filter

     Colour Infra-red Photos
All of the remaining images are taken using the Hoya R25A (red) filter. This is equivalent to about a 590nm converted IR camera. This combination of red light and the entire near infra-red part of the spectrum makes the camera slightly more sensitive to light than 'normal', visible colour and thus gives slightly faster shutter speeds.

Below: This shot looks down into the overgrown church ruins of 'Saint Dunstan In The East'.

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/60th, f/8, iso 200 -Hoya R25A filter

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/100th, f/7.1, iso 100 -Hoya R25A filter

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/80th, f/8, iso 100 -Hoya R25A filter

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/1600th, f/2.5, iso 100 -Hoya R25A filter

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/125th, f/7.1, iso 100 -Hoya R25A filter

Above, you can see one of the restaurants in the top right. This was taken from the middle floor. Below, you can better see how the foliage is constrained to the sides of the structure, around the steps.

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/80th, f/7.1, iso 100 -Hoya R25A filter

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/60th, f/8, iso 125 -Hoya R25A filter

     Fake Tilt-Shift Photos
These last few images are processed (in Photoshop CC) using hand painted masks to control a 'Lens Blur' filter. The goal is to make these images look like a miniature model, but simulating an unnaturally shallow depth of field.

Similar to the first black & white city photo, this colour infra-red shot highlights H.M.S. Belfast. Although quite subtle, I put the focus on the ship, to help draw the eye to it. Making the mask for this involved some rather fiddly mask painting around the spindly details at the top of the ship.

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/100th, f/5.6, iso 100 -Hoya R25A filter

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/125th, f/5.6, iso 100 -Hoya R25A filter

Above: The 'Shard' is pretty much directly south from 'The Sky Garden'. Below and to the left of that is London Bridge station, which is a rail and underground station.
Below: The ikonic 'Tower Bridge, which connects the 'Tower Of London' (old castle), in the north with the 'Town Hall' and H.M.S. Belfast again, on the south bank.

Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 - 1/125th, f/5.6, iso 100 -Hoya R25A filter

Below: Here is the mask use to make the above image:

This took about an hour or so to make and is just about good enough to get the effect that I wanted. I could have spent more time masking off more buildings to get the correct values, but it tends to get muddied and rather time consuming after the main subject has been done.

If you've seen real tilt-shift images basically what they are doing is the gradient underneath and not the mask of the building. They can't actually alter the depth of field, only blur the top and bottom of an image. So although they can give a nicer 'lens blur' effect they can't quite do this separation of subjects.

Photos - Richmond to Kew - Fuji X100

The following photos were taken on a walk from Richmond train station to and around Kew Gardens. My equipment list for the day was: A tripod, the Fuji X100 and a Hoya R72 filter. This is a nice walk to do in good weather at a photographer's pace. Depending on how far around Kew Gardens you walk at the end this is going to be about 4-6 miles. You can go back on the train from Kew, saving you from retracing the walk along the Thames and getting a bit bored and/or tired. 

     General Info

• All of the following photos are taken using a stock Fuji X100. The filter used was a 49mm Hoya R72 (720nm), which requires an adapter.
• This camera and filter were used hand-held for some of the following shots. This requires ISO values of 1600 or above using the lens wide open (f/2.0). You can then get away with 1/4th - 1/40th of a second exposures. Today however I wanted some sharper and more grain free images, so I used a tripod. There was a lot of wispy clouds here but the sun was consistently strong and it gave exposures between 3-10 seconds @ f/5.6 using ISO 200.
• The processing I used here includes the 'False Colour' technique. This involves swapping the red and blue channels around using the channel mixer in Photoshop. 

This first photos was our first view of the Thames after walking through Richmond town centre. This shot was quite lucky as the paddle steamer left just after I took this. At this point we started walking north along the Thames (to the right of this image). This took us around a park, a golf course and eventually Kew Gardens itself, but the entrance to the gardens was still about a mile (1.5km) beyond that.

The large amount of clouds here weaken the typical dark skies of a dynamic IR photo. Despite this the water retains its usual dark tones. This suggests that these tones come from the water itself rather than anything it might normally be reflecting - like the sky. 

The haziness around the top of the fence is cyclists moving past while the image was exposing. In hindsight I should have waited until there was nobody there.

• Contrast detail in bricks is often greater than the same colour image. 
• Shadow detail is more prominant in IR while contrast remains high.
• The red colouring of foliage originally comes from the blue channel of the original infrared image. This is transferred to the red channel in post process.

The motion from people and wind swept trees is difficult to eliminate when using low ISO and moderate apertures on a non-converted (normal) digital camera. With the camera's (standard internal) filter blocking most of the IR light there is little light left when using an external IR-pass filter like the Hoya R72 and worse still using anything higher than 720nm. 

• Converted infrared cameras can fix this issue, but it costs at least £200 and usually means the camera can no longer take colour images. 

On top of the 'Richmond lock and Footbridge', just after a boat had passed through.

• The motion of the boat moving off (top left) and the closing lock gates are perhaps a little less desirable. This sometimes makes me wish for a converted IR camera, but when I can be bothered to lug a tripod around I do like most of the motion effects.

A photo of the 'Richmond lock and Footbridge' itself. It didn't seem to stop east Richmond flooding later that day. We saw people stood on pub benches around 5pm (during the train ride home). 

Since we were here in low tide and there were some steps, the wife and I decided to explore the water's edge.

• This was shot at 1/25th of a second @ f/2, ISO 1600. This camera and filter are very acceptable to shoot with in strong sunlight due to some very good quality high ISO noise performance and a relatively low light lens. Not every camera works as well as this so if you are interested in shooting IR without a tripod check to see if anyone else online has tried it first.
• For more information on the hand-held abilities of the Fuji X100 check out my previous post here.

A spill-over from the stagnant river on the other side of the Thames path (right). I love the uneven cobbles (left), which I assume is a result of tree roots.

This illustrates the nice effects that you can get with a tripod and some slower shutter speeds when dealing with moving water. A waterfall would have been nice, but there aren't too many in London. 

Finally in Kew Gardens, where we sat to have a rest under a tree :).

This image was an exercise in manual focus, timers and guesswork. This explains why we're so off-center here, but I kind of like the way it came out. Here are some ways that the tones of people come out differently in infra-red compared to colour:

• Skin tones come out very pale in infrared. They also don't show many blemishes at all (the opposite of ultraviolet, which is very unflattering), which gives an almost 'china-doll' like effect. 
• The glasses are tinted and thus dark in visible light. Here they look more like safety goggles because infra-red light passes straight through this material. 
• The eye colour (around the pupils) seems the same tone in both of us here. In reality my wife's eyes are very dark brown and mine are very pale blue.  

Some bluebells, showing up red because of the 'False Colour' channels swap technique.

Plants a water are usually enough to interest me in an infrared shot, but this one got me most with the intensity of the reflections in the windows of all those lovely trees.

Plants growing over or through dark objects is often a great subject for IR and I am happy with the way it came out, just wish I had waited for the people to have gotten out of the middle of the shot.

I do love the effects IR has on water, not only the tonal, transparent and reflective differences but also mixed in with the motion from the slightly long exposure. 

One of my last shots from the day. I couldn't resist the twisted texture of this tree in stark contrast to the completely straight lines of the one behind it.

• This was also a long exposure (around 6 seconds). There were quite a few people in frame, but only this guy came out because he stood still for such a long time.
• There is a hot-spot starting to form here, so yes the Fuji X100's lens does suffer from this, but only stopped down a bit on longer exposures some of the time. This won't be an issue while using the camera hand-held because of the wide aperture.