Tanner Springs in Ultraviolet

It was a cold, overcast, near-wintry day, and I went out in the late afternoon. It's hard to imagine more unfavorable circumstances for taking UV photos. But when you have a new toy (i.e. a shiny black UV-pass filter), you always want to go out and play, regardless of the weather.

Given the unfavorable circumstances, I'm reluctant to call these "bad photos", exactly. There wasn't much UV to go around today, so most of these are multi-second exposures, and I didn't bring a tripod so they're all handheld shots. And the subject matter isn't your classic UV fare, with closeups of flowers and such. UV with the camera's digital false color effect looks a bit postnuclear, if you ask me. But it's what I had close at hand. I'm not about to wait until spring. So rather than calling them "bad photos", I prefer to regard them as merely "preliminary results".

I didn't pick Tanner Springs just because it was close, actually. I've seen a few indications that water does interesting stuff in UV, becoming all shiny and reflective. I'm not entirely taken with today's preliminary results, but check out this waterfall for an idea of what I have in mind, ideally. Certainly nothing I did today comes close to that, but someday, perhaps, with more practice and better subject matter...

In any case, there's an interesting piece about UV subject matter here, which is where I found that waterfall photo. The shot from the golf course does look a lot like what I came up with, except a bit brighter and sharper. So I may be on the right track, at least.

Oh, and before anyone gets pedantic about it: I do realize the B+W 403 filter leaks a bit of infrared, such that these aren't completely pure UV. I took an IR photo for comparison, which you'll find down toward the bottom. You can't miss it, with the classic IR snow-grass effect and all that. The UV ones look nothing like it. I've been reading up a bit, and it appears that what I really need now is something called a BG38 filter, which supposedly cuts substantially all the IR while passing the UV, pretty ideal when used along with a 403. Or you could use it alone and take some fascinating(?) blue-green-ish photos, I suppose.