This year marks the centenary of the first infrared photographs that have appeared in print. Professor Robert Williams Wood, the man who took the first published infrared photographs, had to sensitise his own photographic plates to infrared light, as there was no commercially produced infrared emulsion available at the time.

The first infrared films appeared in the 1930s, and ignited the imagination of some of the greatest photographers of the time. Infrared photography gradually grew in popularity, and many manual-focus lenses produced in the second half of the twentieth century had infrared focus indices to facilitate precise focus adjustments. Infrared photography gained new momentum with the dawn of the digital age, as most imagers are more or less sensitive to infrared light. Finally, the arrival of DSLR Live View has made infrared photography easier than ever before, as certain DSLR cameras come with a Live View Boost option that allows composition and focusing even when a visible-light blocking IR pass filter is attached to the lens. The photo above, for instance, was taken using an Olympus E-520 digital SLR camera in Live View mode.

Via BBC Viewfinder Blog

Recommended Reading
How to Take Infra Red Photos by David Noton
Infrared 100 - a website dedicated to the centenary of infrared photography

Photo © Zoltan Arva-Toth, 2008

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