Water Tower in Near IR

Savanna Army Depot, along the Mississippi River in Illinois, was deactivated about ten years ago. It is now the site of Lost Mound Nature Preserve, but many of the old structures remain standing - more or less. Also remaining is unexploded ordnance from many decades of bomb and shell testing. Until this is cleaned up, many areas of the preserve remain closed to visitors.

As a result, The place has a ghost town feel. Despite limited access, there are numerous subjects for normal and near infrared photography.


This tower was photographed with my Canon 5DIR, the result was converted to black and white. There was no particular reason for the choice of IR in this instance, but the body just happened to be at hand when I decided to experiment with various perspectives. One advantage was to darken the clear blue sky a bit.

Hi Tom,
Nicely done! I think the IR lends itself well to this image.
I'd like to see more of the Depot, but please tread carefully!

Hi Tom,

What a clean image! I really am impressed that the presentation is more dramatic as the architecture of the tower has no competition from distracting elements and there's no story here, just the anatomy of the structure. Now that this is done, you might consider searching out other clean physical forms that also have physicality or complexity to also stand on their own like this.

Asher

Hi John and Asher,

Thanks for looking and commenting.

The unexploded leftovers are worrisome from the maintenance and administration point of view, but it's very easy for the visitor to stay in the safe areas. The place is loaded with chain link fence topped with barbed wire, and also festooned with serious looking warning signs. Some of the signs were posted many years ago and many are almost unreadable today. Among my favorites is "No cameras allowed beyond this point!"

The place has a chapel converted to a facility called the SAD (Savanna Army Depot) Museum which has exhibits for the public to view. It's OK, but the real treasure is the opportunity to chat with the locals and to get a first-hand account of their stories of the facility and the surrounding area.

We're both on the same wavelength regarding physical forms that as subjects of photography, Asher. I prefer IR photo ops from late autumn into winter when the lack of foliage enables its use to be a little less obvious than it during other seasons. I'll keep an eye open for possibilities in the next few months.

Speaking of which, this is a view of power line towers last July -

The towers were my intended subject, but the IR sensor rendered the green growth as mounds of snow and hoarfrost covered trees. Not so good, maybe.

Tom Robbins said:

The towers were my intended subject, but the IR sensor rendered the green growth as mounds of snow and hoarfrost covered trees. Not so good, maybe.

Click to expand...

I wonder whether you could work with that using shadow highlight in Photoshop or other tonal remapping program to give the foliage the treatment to bring out details in highlights as in clouds in vis light images.

Asher