Sports Photographer and WhiteWall Team Up for Incredible Infrared Series

Aug 01, 2024

Jeremy Gray

A colorful image split in half: the right shows a skateboarder in white attire performing a trick on a railing under a red-leaved tree against a blue sky. The left side displays a framed, vibrant photo of a landscape with red foliage and a person skateboarding.

Renowned printing company WhiteWall works with a diverse range of photographers and other visual artists and often highlights a creator’s work as part of a broader marketing campaign. The latest to work with WhiteWall is photographer Lorenz Holder.

Holder, a German photographer, is best known for his action sports photography, having worked with clients like Red Bull, BMW, and Nitro Snowboards, to name a few. However, Holder’s new campaign with WhiteWall focuses on a less traditional type of photography: infrared.

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Infrared photography shows the world in a fundamentally different way, relying on wavelengths of light that the human eye (and a typical camera) cannot see. Infrared photography can be used to capture surreal landscapes, sci-fi inspired cityscapes, and even show NFL players in a fresh new way.

Digital infrared photography relies on modified cameras and specialized filters that block out specific wavelengths of light while allowing others to pass through to the tweaked image sensor. By default, nearly every mainstream camera has an infrared-blocking filter in front of its image sensor, ensuring that the images people typically want to capture look as good as possible.

A white brick wall features four framed photographs of urban scenes with vivid red trees. The largest photo depicts an empty parking lot with red trees, and the smaller images showcase various street views with similar bold red foliage.

“The exciting thing about infrared is that you are photographing something that the human eye cannot see,” Holder explains. “Infrared photography gives everyday scenes a dreamlike finish and expands the creative possibilities enormously.”

A framed photograph of a person in a white outfit skateboarding on a ledge in front of a bright red tree under a clear blue sky. The image has high contrast colors, creating a striking visual effect.

Holder’s new infrared images, seen throughout this article, were created exclusively for WhiteWall’s latest campaign, highlighting the company’s UltraHD prints. The company says its UltraHD process enables high-resolution prints with rich, vibrant colors.

“This really brings out the colors and is simply ‘wow,'” Holder says.

A close-up shot of a magnifying lens placed on a high-quality print of a skateboarding scene. The print features a skateboarder performing a trick against a vibrant backdrop of red trees and a clear blue sky. The lens distorts a portion of the image it covers.

Color accuracy is also critical. “It’s very important to me that the images look exactly the same in print as I set them up on the computer,” Holder says.

WhiteWall provides users with ICC profiles to soft-proof their images, depending on their desired product. The company also offers extensive customer support, including complimentary scheduled meetings to discuss printing specific photos with WhiteWall’s team of experts — a service PetaPixel has used before.

A woman wearing white gloves holds and examines a framed photograph. The colorful image within the frame shows a skateboarder performing a trick on a concrete structure beside a vibrant red tree under a bright blue sky. The woman is in a room with various art supplies.

The presentation goes beyond the print itself; it also includes borders and framing options. Since infrared color photography relies so heavily upon bright, eye-catching colors, WhiteWall and Holder put his new prints inside pop art frames from the Design Edition by Studio Besau-Marguerre series, including red and purple frames.