Infrared photography is one of those passionate sub-cultures buried deep within the photographic world. Camera manufacturers all thought IR photography would go mainstream, but it didn’t, it was washed away  by the smartphones, like so many other subsets of the photographic world.

You can hardly buy new IR cameras anymore, I had one a couple of years ago, but somehow it got lost and I can’t find one. Dan at maxmax.com, a manufacturer of monochrome and IR cameras sent me my IR camera and I loved it, then got distracted.

This week, he send me another camera, it arrived today, it’s an old Canon XS rebel converted to IR, and I took it out in the yard. Dan shares my view that it isn’t really the camera, it’s the photographer.

I’m buying this beat-up old thing for $250, it is not much of a camera, but it  seems to take some beautiful photos. The challenge is on me.

Infrared photography is where the film or image sensor is sensitive to infrared light, a camera like I have is what’s called near-infrared as opposed to far-infrared which is really thermal imaging.

The sensor on the camera blocks all or most of the visible light spectrum, thus black can look like red or white.

IR photography is very powerful in my small corner of the world, very spiritual, the camera focuses on the light, and changes and re-imagines the world I see in front of me. It is all about light in in a way, changes the perspective on the world.

Photography has helped me, a broken Dyslexic, to see the world in very new and different ways. This has transformed me. I’m drawn to forms of photography that demand more of me than my souped-up digital camera, which does a lot of the thinking for me.

I like to think for myself when I can. I have a lot to learn.

I’ve got one small 18-55 mm lens, I’m eager to experiment with this, like pinhole photography, it takes a lot of time to figure out how to take these photos, and a lot of patience. I have to get my head straight.