Infrared camera captures spooky campus scenes
Infrared camera captures spooky campus scenes
If East Hill were relocated to Oz, Narnia, Wonderland, or Middle Earth, it might look like the world seen through Kent Loeffler's lens. The twenty-five-year veteran of Cornell's plant pathology department is best known for his artful, up-close shots of fungi and other biota. Now he has self-published a book of his infrared photography— haunting images that cast Cornell as a vaguely malevolent fantasy land.
Entitled Cornell (infra) Red, the soft-cover volume comprises some fifty photos, from the Sibley Dome under a wild corona of clouds to a nefarious-looking woodchuck crouched outside Sage Hall. The images—more than two dozen of which Loeffler will exhibit in Mann Library during May and June—were taken with a conventional digital camera retrofitted to capture only the infrared spectrum. "The thing I like most about it is that the images are really bizarre," he says. "Anything that has chlorophyll—trees, shrubs, grass—reflects a lot of infrared, so it looks bright, almost like a snowscape. Blue skies have almost no infrared, so they photograph as dark and clouds show up dramatically. So you get this weird inversion of tonalities. You take a picture on a bright summer day, and it looks like the middle of winter with a full moon."
Loeffler designed the book through an online publisher; it's available at Lulu.com for about $20, and he hopes to sell it via the Cornell Store as well. In addition to the images, it features a brief explanation of the technology and a preface by Johnson Museum curator Nancy Green. "It seems a contradictory notion to imagine that a photograph, which captures a single moment, can also encompass the feeling of time's passing," Green writes. "But the momentum in Loeffler's work is convincing, if occasionally disconcerting. Sometimes the landscape rushes toward us, like an unchecked train determined to carry us with it; while at other times the movement is quiet and embracing, gently pulling us into a tranquil world of wonder."
The book's four-dozen images are among hundreds he has taken of campus, toting his infrared camera during his daily hike from downtown to the Ag Quad and back again—a commute he undertakes in all kinds of weather. "It's amazing how many people troop up and down the Hill every day," he muses. "You see some incredible scenes—amazing images of campus that, if you weren't walking, you'd probably miss." Among his favorites is the book's cover shot, a spooky twist on the quintessential Big Red view. "The tower is this weird shadow against the sky," he says. "It's so classic Cornell, but it's otherworldly too."
— Beth Saulnier