The Pond's Dark Waters

The Pond's Dark Waters, originally uploaded by jhhymas.

I am just learning how to do this, but I love the results. You can make any weedpatch or clump of trees look world-class, I think. I took these pictures with my infrared camera, a Fujifilm Finepix F30. I got it on eBay; there are quite a few companies that convert them to be able to see infrared light, which is outside the visible spectrum. With any converted camera that enables you to set a custom white balance, you can avoid most of the the color cast. Otherwise they are sort of pink, or blue if you choose a tungsten white balance. After conversion, the camera is only good for these pictures. They are still RGB files, but look monotone.
There are two problems with the unprocessed files besides the possible color cast. One is a slight softness of the image, which hasn't bothered me with landscapes (or you can sharpen); the other is that the range of values nearly ALWAYS needs to be increased. It is very easy to do in Picasa, if you feel lazy. That's the way I did this, which I took on this morning's birdwalk. There are probably better ways to do it in Photoshop. I will work on a few things later and more intensely--when I find which images I like best. I am so excited about these ghostly white trees. And the Lake Michigan pictures I took at Sturgeon Bay earlier this month.