In her enchanting Infra Realism series, Melbourne-based photographer Kate Ballis turns California’s iconic landscape into a world of surreality. While we all know and love the familiar modernist mansions and sweeping landscapes of California’s Palm Spring, Kate Ballis manages to turn them on their head. By shooting the terrains with an infrared camera and pop-coloured filters, Ballis picks up the extremities of light that the human eye cannot register. The result, is a surreal spectrum of pink and purple buildings, blue shrubbery and red skies.
Claiming that her work ‘straddles science and magic, providing a glimpse into the unknown,’ Ballis uses these unusual techniques to make ‘the unseen, seen and the seen unseen.’ This unique method to her art ensures that scenes such as the Californian hills, are no longer ordinary but incredibly enlightening.
Ballis achieves this special effect by purchasing a new digital Sony device before sending it off to be converted into a full-spectrum camera. This was then able to capture infrared, or heat radiation, rather than visible light. She then added an array of colourful filters over the lens, creating the set of surreal, stupendous images you see before you.
