Many people seem not to be aware of this, but there is a way to use flash without anybody seing the light. The method is simple, the light you use is out of the spectrum that humans can see and the film you use is sensible to it. Perfect for shy photographers or when nobody wants the scene to be perturbed... lets say hello to infrared flash photography!
- by Weegee
- image from The Park, by Kohei Yoshiyuki
Those are probably the two authors that right now come to my mind as taking the most bang for the buck of shooting with infrared flash: Weegee and Kohei Yoshiyuki (who
was previously spotlighted here). It happens to be that the technique for producing these images is not that complicated at the end of the day, and one of the contributors to the flickr group
Children of Weegee wrote a whole
step by step guide to how to build an invisible infrared flash. Check it out. All you need is a film camera, a flash (powerful if possible), some infrared film (the Kodak one is going out of stock and is the best) and an infrared filter for the flash. Well, and glue, scissors and cardboard. Welcome back to primary!
