Vatican City –

Having covered the Vatican for 27 years — that’s three popes — Associated Press photographer Andrew Medichini has mastered snapping images of papal pomp.

To capture this photo, Medichini knew exactly where to position himself based on the wind for a potential candid shot of Pope Francis.

Here is what he said about making this extraordinary photo:

Why this photo

After several years following popes in and out of the Vatican, you get to know where to be and how to anticipate the right frame according to the news or the conditions of the day — windy, sunny, rainy, etc.

The day I took this photo was rather quiet, no big names meeting the pope, no particular weather conditions. So, I decided to go to the spot where he enters St. Peter’s Square in the car and gets relatively close to me — and where there is always some wind channeled from the arch he drives through. I was lucky, his cap flew and, just at the right moment, he tried to catch it.

How I made this photo

The photo was taken from the first of the steps that lead to the churchyard at the entrance of St. Peter’s Basilica, where I had a clearer view over the heads of the pope’s security guards with a 600mm lens from a distance of around 40-50 metres.

It was then cropped in Photoshop, as the picture was still quite wide with distracting elements in it. The camera was set to one of its highest frames-per-second speeds. From experience, I know that if something happens it will likely be in a fraction of a second. That’s what happened in this case; I only got two shots and one was good.

Why this photo works

I believe it works because it shows an intimate and normal gesture by one of the most known people in the world. It’s so different from the formal meeting photos or the more ritual moments during ceremonies. For that split second, he’s like any person trying to catch their hat as it’s blown away by wind.

Dune: Part II was recently released in theaters, garnering positive reviews from movie-goers and reviewers alike. Over at Kolari, we were hyped to see infrared photography used in one of its most visually stunning movie sequences in recent memory.

Without any major spoilers, the effect is used on the Harkonnen homeworld, Giedi Prime: a poisoned and industrialized world, filled with cities of black, beetle-like skyscrapers and gladiatorial arenas. In stark contrast to the buildings, the light produced by this planet’s sun gives the denizens an inhumanly pale complexion. To realize the book’s depiction of the villainous Harkonnen homeworld and its inhabitants, infrared photography was used to render this imagery on the big screen.

What is Infrared Photography?

Infrared photography lets us capture an invisible and often alien world. The human eye can see wavelengths from about 400nm–700nm (from purple to red). Infrared light exists in wavelengths beyond 700nm.

Infrared has a long history in cinema but is often used for technical purposes or special effects behind the scenes. We have supplied our filters to Lucas Films to be used for motion capture of infrared paint dots for The Irishman. Hoyte van Hoytema recently pioneered a use for infrared to simulate nighttime scenes shot in broad daylight using infrared in a dual camera system, taking advantage of how infrared makes skies appear black in daylight. Only an infrared specialist would be able to detect the use of infrared in these scenes, which is why we were so excited to see Dune showcase the true aesthetic possibilities of infrared cinematography.

Infrared is most popular for its effects on landscapes. Depending on the filter used, blue skies often become black or blue, and leaves can become white or red. Red filters are often used in Hollywood to make skin appear more smooth, but infrared filters amplify this effect to a stunning extreme. If you go deep enough into the infrared spectrum of light, skin becomes translucent to the point where you can actually see veins. Eyes can look otherworldly with unnaturally lucid irises. Often, productions use the lower, milder variants of infrared to keep the models looking relatively normal, like in Russ’s music video and Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender. Other times the unsettling look is the goal, like Apocalyptica’s “Rise” music video, although this is less common.

How to Achieve the “Harkonnen Effect”

The Harkonnen Effect is notably black and white, but somehow, it looks mysterious and alien. Why? Unlike classic black-and-white photography, Dune used infrared videography to add an ethereal aesthetic to the black-and-white scenes. Materials captured through infrared photography, like foliage, skies, clothing, and skin tones, will react in unique and sometimes unpredictable ways. Let’s explore how this works practically by attempting to mimic infrared shots from the sci-fi movie. Our media team thought it would be fun to re-create this imagery with Kolari’s in-house gear and share the process we used to achieve it.

To shoot infrared, you will first need either an infrared-modified camera or a full spectrum camera with filters. The most common IR filters range from 550nm (mildest effect) to 850nm (strongest effect). Each filter will provide different results in different scenarios. A full-spectrum conversion makes a digital camera sensitive to UV, visible, and infrared light, allowing the most flexibility and the ability to switch between various clip-in or lens filters to achieve the desired effect. Almost all cameras can be modified to shoot in infrared, starting from the cheapest point and shoots, through DSLR and mirrorless cameras, as well as Canon, Sony, Blackmagic, and Red cinema cameras.

With post-processing, using 665nm can help you achieve B&W imagery. This filter uses a combination of visible and infrared light to produce false-color infrared. 720nm is good if you are interested in shooting mild colors and B&W. 780nm and 850nm produce higher contrast B&W imagery.

The Comparison Shots

To recreate this portrait of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, we used a single high-powered, infrared light and taped each side of the reflector to mimic the lighting of the shot. It took a while to get the correct lighting angle—something too far top-down casted harsh shadows, especially below Justin’s nose, but this dramatic effect could be great for other purposes.

Between filters, we decided to shoot this scene with the 850nm filter. 850nm cut out all of the visible light and provided the most similar tones to the reference shot in comparison to the results of 665nm, 720nm, and 780nm—all of which pass some level of visible light into the camera. You’ll need a high-power light if you’re shooting this, as higher nanometer IR filters cut out more light. Here are the results with each filter:

As you can see above, Justin’s black shirt appears vastly different between shots taken with each IR filter. Fabric can be particularly challenging for costume design—a struggle for the Dune production as well. Many synthetic black inks will become white in infrared, while naturally dark pigments tend to stay dark. This can sometimes result in white fabrics with visible dark threads or other unexpected issues. You will also notice some minor hue and contrast differences in his hair. Hair dye can often appear brighter in infrared. This will be important for a hair and makeup team to take into consideration before shooting in infrared on a movie set. Of course, all of the Harkonnens are bald, so this wasn’t an issue in Dune!

This shot of the Bene Gesserit agent, Margot Fenring, watching the spectacle on Giedi Prime was a little more challenging to recreate. We needed to capture the soft lighting of the scene, while also making sure there was enough lighting to pass through IR filters.

With a single light, we bounced it to create soft lighting. It was just enough to make the shot work. In our test shot with our stand-in for the Bene Gessserit, Matt (as seen above), we were able to nail the lighting for Amber to take on the role of Margot Fenring.

While 850nm worked fantastic in our first shooting, it did not work at all in this scenario. It made the lighting too flat and cut out a majority of the key light on Amber’s face. You can see the decrease in light from 665nm all the way to 850nm. Compare the 850nm shot to using 665nm in combination with desaturation—since 665nm filter partially operates in visible light, it provided us more to work with in post-production.

Although we didn’t have a colosseum or the proper lighting to work with, we were able to mimic the composition of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in this wide-angle shot. As you can see below, the progression of 665nm to 850nm provided different results in comparison to the reference. The color hues are still present at 665nm and 720nm but fade away going towards 780nm and 850nm. Particularly with 665nm, the color of the foliage pops compared with the other IR wavelengths as it overlaps partially in the visible light spectrum. For this shot, 780nm seems to work well. 850nm demonstrates how a sunny day can be transformed into a harsh and forbidding landscape.

Final Thoughts

Infrared videography can be a powerful tool in creating an unfamiliar atmosphere in a sci-fi movie by revealing light in a range of the electromagnetic spectrum that human eyes are unable to see. It captures light that is beyond the visible spectrum, resulting in surreal, color-distorted images. By using this technique, filmmakers can heighten the sense of tension and intrigue by altering the perception of the scene by the audience, making ordinary landscapes or scenes appear uncanny and unsettling with a monochromatic palette that is distinct from traditional black and white. This distinct color palette can enhance the eerie feeling of the environment, evoking a sense of desolation or alienation of a creepy and immersive atmosphere which was used so well in Dune: Part II.

Kolari has shown that you can achieve the “Harkonnen Effect” at home through infrared conversion of mirrorless cameras and infrared filters in many different form factors. You can use any infrared magnetic clip-in filters, drop-in filters for the Kolari EF-EOS R Drop-in Mount Adapter, or lens filters to achieve this effect. You can use our filters to achieve this effect, but to get the true glory of the imagery of Dune: Part II, you would ideally use an entire modified cinema camera and one of our large format cinema filters. IR isn’t limited to black and white imagery: you can use different LUTs and settings to tweak your visuals with otherworldly false-color infrared schemes to create your own sci-fi masterpiece.

About the author: Phillip Andrew Iglesias is a photographer and media coordinator at Kolari Vision, which offers pro-level filter optics and digital camera modifications. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. This article was also published here.

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In Cuetzalan del Progreso, Mexico, a group of women are challenging gender roles by participating in a traditionally male ritual called Danza de los Voladores. The ritual begins with a ceremonial dance before five participants ascend a 30-meter pole and jump off the top, head first, tied to ropes as they revolve around the pole towards the ground. 

It’s believed that the dance began as a way to encourage a good harvest. Historically, only men were allowed to partake in this ritual, but a few women in Cuetzalan have recently joined the practice in defiance of traditional gender roles, symbolizing transformation within their social context. While support for female flyers has grown within the local community, women still face greater barriers compared to their male counterparts. Balancing household responsibilities and full-time jobs, women are faced with greater hurdles that often prevent them from flying after a certain age.

I first arrived in Cuetzalan in 2013 as an anthropology student. I kept returning throughout the years, researching topics related to local eating habits, healthcare, and traditional medicine. But as I became more interested in documentary photography and filmmaking, I started working on collaborative visual projects that touched on social themes I was interested in.

Since 2022 I’ve been documenting the lives of several women flyers, aged nine to 50. Jacinta, 50, belongs to the first generation of flying women; Irene, 33, and Nikté, 12, are a mother-daughter duo; Julisa, 39, is the first trans voladora in the region; and Yolanda and Xochitl, both nine years old, are the first female practitioners from their families.

When Women Fly is an ongoing project that honors the women participating in  Danza de los Voladores. With my work, I hope to celebrate the daily lives of these women and showcase how they balance being mothers, sisters, daughters, workers, and also proud voladoras.

By Ian Lloyd

Published: 06:51 EDT, 24 March 2024 | Updated: 07:02 EDT, 24 March 2024

The manipulation of royal photographs is nothing new. Official photos have been tweaked all the way down the decades – to flatter the sitter, of course.

In January 1852, Queen Victoria asked fashionable London photographer William Kilburn to capture her sitting with her five eldest children. 

As with Kate’s Mother’s Day photo the children posed on either side of her, but unlike Kate, the resulting image showed Victoria sitting with her eyes closed.

She looked a fright – and was duly unamused. 

‘Mine was unfortunately horrid, but the children’s were pretty,’ she commented.

Not wishing anyone to see such lese majeste, Victoria scratched her face off the daguerreotype image – the first known example of royal photo-editing.

With nine children – and, eventually, 40 grandchildren – group shots of the Queen and her family were a logistical nightmare. 

Agencies and newspaper editors would resort to photo montages showing the elderly monarch surrounded by her descendants at a reunion that never actually occurred.

By the end of her long life, Victoria’s loyal photographers retouched the images they had taken, trimming her waist, removing her wrinkles along with the bags under her eyes and one of her double chins, as well as adding extra hair. 

Thanks to their skill, Victoria, by then well into her seventies, looked fresh faced in her official Diamond Jubilee official photograph.

The diminutive monarch who stood at less than five feet tall, grew in height for the cameras by standing on a box. 

Victoria’s daughter-in-law, Princess Alexandra, was another who tried to maintain her youthful looks well into old age by persuading photographers to retouch her images.

The official photos of her 1902 Coronation occasion made 57-year-old Alexandra, look several years’ younger.

The wife of Edward VII often appeared as smooth skinned and slender-waisted as her three daughters in family portraits.

Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother, was almost 39 when Cecil Beaton took an iconic set of images at Buckingham Palace. 

To the casual observer, the pictures suggest a woman of 30. Thanks, of course, to flattering retouches by the society photographer. 

‘Can you do a lot afterwards?’ the Queen had asked, which was more or less a royal decree. 

Equally flattering images emerged from a post-war sitting when she was a matronly 48.

‘Over many years every photograph of the Queen Mother taken by Beaton and chosen for publication was retouched,’ said her biographer, Michael De-La-Noy.

Beaton used natural light, shining through the future Queen Mother’s crinoline dresses to create a slimming effect. 

Another royal favourite, Norman Parkinson, used what he called ‘magic light’ to soften the features of his royal sitters. 

Princess Margaret was photographed by ‘Parks’ in the summer of 1978 to mark her forthcoming tour of Tuvalu.   

It was commented upon at the time that she looked fresh-faced and somewhat younger than her 48 years – suspiciously so.

Two years later he photographed Margaret with her mother and sister in a memorable set of images to commemorate the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday. 

Taken at the Royal Lodge at Windsor, Parks used the sunlight as well as fill-in flash to create a flattering image

When it came to photographs of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, one oft-repeated approach was to superimpose two separate images (taken at the same session), one on top of the other. 

This can be seen, for example in the commission Parkinson carried out for the Post Office – to be used on a set of stamps that mark their Silver Wedding in 1972.

The Queen’s photographer cousin, Patrick Lichfield, used the same trick in Nov 2001 at a sitting to mark the forthcoming Golden Jubilee of 2002. 

Again two separate photos were taken – this time digital ones – and then super-imposed.

Lord Lichfield also took a memorable group shot of the extended royal family at Windsor during the Christmas holidays of 1971 to mark the Queen’s forthcoming silver wedding.

There wasn’t enough room to take one single photograph, so Lichfield took three separate shots of the group and then skilfully joined them together into one composite.

By the dawn of the new millennium, increased use of digital photography made such manipulation comparatively easy. 

A quarter of a century before the Prince of Wales took the troublesome Mother’s Day photo, William himself the subject of headlines when he was digitally manipulated at his uncle Edward’s wedding to Sophie Rhys-Jones.

Unlike the Kate photos there was no media storm and the story was treated in a light-hearted way by the media

The photographer who took the official family photo was Sir Geoffrey Shakerley, who was married to the Queen’s cousin, Lady Elizabeth Anson.

He said Prince Edward decided his nephew “was not looking his best”, so the photo was digitally altered to replace William’s face with one from another shot where he is smiling.

In an interview on ITN News, Shakerley claimed

‘Prince Edward said he didn’t think Prince William looked absolutely his best, so digitally we were able to put in another picture of Prince William from one of the other shots where he is smiling and laughing.’

The Princess of Wales is an skilled amateur photographer. 

Having studied art history at the University of St Andrews she is a natural when it comes to composition, the use of colour and the the ability to relax the sitter. 

While her photographs of William and their children, as well as those of the Charles and Camilla and the late Queen and Prince Philip have been widely praised, one or two have been criticised for less than professional photo-editing.

In the summer of 2022 Kate took an iconic photo of the late Queen taken at Balmoral in the last weeks of her life, and released in April 2023 to mark what would have been the late Queen’s 97th birthday.

While many applauded the informal shot which showed Queen Elizabeth with two of her grandchildren and eight great grandchildren, the photo prompted some negative comments from the public.

Yet many felt that cutting and pasting the photo would have been necessary to as getting ten small children to pose happily is akin to herding cats. 

More importantly Kate would not have wanted to put William’s frail grandmother through a long photo session.

And, as we have seen, it was nothing new.