The Art of Seeing #43: Benedict Brain is seduced by the magical technology and creative potential of thermal imaging
The quality of this image is relatively low‑fi, but Ben relishes the extraordinary, extreme and saturated colour. iPhone 11 Pro with Flir One Pro thermal camera(Image credit: Benedict Brain)
About Benedict Brain
(Image credit: Marcus Hawkins)
Benedict Brain is a UK-based photographer, journalist and artist. He is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society and sits on the society’s Distinctions Advisory Panel. He is also a past editor of Digital Camera Magazine, and the author of You Will be Able to Take Great Photos by The End of This Book.
When I first became interested in photography, I was seduced in part by the alchemy and magic of the darkroom. The process of making an image using chemistry was awe-inspiring. I don’t use film so often these days, but occasionally I’ll run a roll through my camera and process it in the kitchen sink. That sense of magic never ceases to amaze me.
Despite the myriad advantages of digital photography, the lack of ‘magic’ in the digital process is a disappointment. However, there is still a lot to marvel at in the digital world: if someone had told the 10-year-old me, in my darkroom, that one day I would be taking photographs on a smartphone and beaming them around the world in nanoseconds, I would have been astounded.
And if someone also said that I could plug in a little adaptor and the smartphone would be able to take thermal images, I would have been flabbergasted. While it might not be the same as the alchemy of the darkroom, there are many things you cannot see with the naked eye that you can only see with a thermal imaging camera – and that is magic in my book.
I have a small Flir One Pro which plugs into my iPhone 11 Pro: using the relevant app, hey presto, I have a thermal imaging camera. It’s really intended for engineers and other more practical uses, but being the experimental creative that I am, I relish in the potential. Apart from anything else, on a purely aesthetic level, I love the wonderful hues of a completely new color palette to work with.
This image was taken in my kitchen just as a test; but the more I looked at it, the more I was taken by the near-abstract arrangement of color and shape. The vase of flowers and the window give some tangible evidence of what the image is. In our current time, when the temperature in humans is so relevant, I can see some potential in exploring the world from a thermal perspective.
Benedict Brain is a UK based photographer, journalist and artist. He graduated with a degree in photography from the Derby School of Art in 1991 (now University of Derby), where he was tutored and inspired by photographers John Blakemore and Olivier Richon, amongst others. He is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society and also sits on the society’s Distinctions Advisory Panel.
Until July 2018 Benedict was editor of Britain’s best-selling consumer photography magazine, Digital Camera Magazine. As a journalist he met and interviewed some of the world’s greatest photographers and produced articles on a wide range of photography related topics, presented technique videos, wrote in-depth features, curated and edited best-in-class content for a range of titles including; Amateur Photographer, PhotoPlus, N-Photo, Professional Photography and Practical Photoshop. He currently writes a regular column, The Art of Seeing, for Digital Camera magazine.
