Saddlemire Trail Infrared

 After my hike on the Kip Trail, I had time so I took another walk on part of the Saddlemire Trail which also has a trailhead on Pike Rd. I confess that I have never walked the entire length of this one and this hike was no different. I went as far as the boardwalks then turned around I understand that it goes all the way to the SLU campus. I will have to go back and hike it all some time soon. Once again I only used my IR converted G-11.

Weather station

Bench by the Little River

Milkweed

Boardwalk

Common Buttercup

Fallen Tree

That's it for now. I will try to post more frequently. If you have any questions post them in the comments.

Kip Trail Infrared

 The Kip Trail is a nature trail near Canton, NY That runs between CR27 and the Pike Rd.  You can find directions on the web or on the All Trails app.  I have hiked it before, last fall, and wanted to see what it was like in spring. I decided to take my IR G-11 that I described in the previous post. The trail was muddy and buggy. I used 'Adirondack Herbal Repellant' which is a salve in a tin that is nice for carrying because it doesn't spill like liquid. I got it from ADKfragrancefarm.com.* I should have worn waterproof boots. I didn't go all the way through to CR27 from Pike Rd. where I started.  I turned around at a mud hole that was too big and deep for my footwear.  I did shoot a batch of IR photos though.

I tried photographing wildflowers but all the green and the flowers registered as white in IR so the only ones that 'worked' were like the above where the background was dead leaves and wood.

The trail passes by a horseshoe bend in the Little River. This is a 6 vertical frame panorama of the bend.

The other cool feature along the trail is a series of vernal pools that are dried up later in the summer and fall. They were one of the reasons I wanted to hike it in spring.

False Hellebore (veratrum viride) along the trailside.

Another vernal pool.

And another. This is where I  turned around.

As always, the photos are copyrighted. Enjoy them here but feel free to share the link to this page with anyone you wish.
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Eclipse in Infrared - The prelude

 Recently, as in last December, I had an old Canon G-11 converted to Infrared. LifePixel was running a holiday sale that was too good to pass up and I had the G-11 just lying around unused so...  I had paid over $100 to have it repaired and CLAed the year before but ended up not needing it for what I used it for back in the day, Do a search of the blog for G-11 and the G-10 it replaced. It is a good camera albeit out of date. But I'm rambling again. 

The day of the eclipse I wondered what it would look like photographed in IR. I took it out ahead of the time the totality was supposed to happen and took one shot of the sun which showed two bright disks, not one. I assumed (never assume) that the second bright spot was an internal reflection in the lens and decided not to use it. Instead, I used my OMD E-M 5iii with a 150-300mm lens and got pretty much the same shots a bazillion other people got.

Only when  I took the IR camera to a couple of local trails and shot a batch of IR photos then imported them to Lightroom did I realize that the second bright disk, which had been invisible to my eye, was actually the Moon approaching the Sun. DUH! Now I wish I had a time machine to go back and redo the shoot with both cameras. I can only wonder what the totality would have looked like in IR.

Above is my one lonely IR eclipse photo through thin clouds. A photographer friend told me that there will be another total eclipse over Spain in 2026. Maybe I'll have to schedule a trip to Spain.