This past weekend I taught a workshop in Fort Lauderdale, FL, and thought I'd have some free time to go out and shoot. With that in mind, I brought my infrared camera along to play.

Last year I sent an old Nikon D70 in to Life Pixel (LifePixel.com) to have it converted to infrared. I wrote about that in a post back then. I tell people that having an infrared camera is a bit like when you get your first fisheye lens - it's easy to shoot everything with it, and can quickly get old. Of course, the opposite can happen as well, that you never use it. And that's what I've done the last few months, never taking it out of the cabinet.

With infrared, you really need sunlight to get the cool effect. And I figured if I couldn't get that in Florida, where could I? Also, I'd never used it on the beach, so there was another incentive.

I'm still struggling with understanding infrared exposure. Sometimes I need to overexpose, sometimes underexpose, sometimes by several stops one way or the other. Don't know if I could do it without the LCD's histogram and highlights readout. However, with these tools I can always get the exposure I need, eventually.

I created a white balance preset off of green grass, to get the classic effect of greens going white or gray. At some point I want to play with other types of white balance presets and see what that does. I've been shooting a combination of NEF plus JPEG, so I'll also get around to working the white balance with the NEF files.

What I like best about doing this is the high-contrast look it gives me, which takes me back to printing on high-contrast paper in the 1970's. As a bonus, while most of the image has that look, the blues remain blue. In time I'll start working that effect intentionally. For now, it happens by accident, like most of my pictures. Bottom line, though, is that it's fun, and that's why I got into photography in the first place.