Seeing Yuko-En Japanese Garden Through Infrared
During a recent visit to Yuko-En Japanese Garden, I spent the afternoon photographing the trees, water, reflections, and quiet spaces with an infrared camera.
Infrared photography changed the familiar autumn landscape into something more dreamlike. The leaves glowed with warm orange light, the sky deepened into blue, and the pond reflected a second version of the garden beneath the surface.
I was especially drawn to the reflections. The tree above the water and the tree below seemed to belong to two different worlds, briefly meeting in the stillness of the pond.
I made a short video from the visit and wanted to share it with you:
The photograph accompanying this post was made during that same journey. It is a quiet reminder of why I continue to explore infrared photography: sometimes a place reveals itself only when we learn to see it differently.
The same scene can render completely differently depending on which wavelength you shoot it in, and how much infrared light is actually bouncing off what's in front of you — which you can't always predict just by looking. So when I'm out shooting a scene I really care about, I don't shoot it once. I shoot it several times, often across several different wavelengths, including 850nm for that deep, otherworldly contrast.