Japanese Garden Infrared

[PRSearls]

Here is a capture from a shoot in a local Japanese garden. Terrible lighting (clear, noon sunlight) for normal photography but perfect for infrared. I'm beginning to learn B&W post processing techniques. I like the various textures from the foliage and water reflection. Lots of small scenes like this in the garden. Comments welcome.

Paul S

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[Sam W]

Nice work Paul, like how you manged not to blow out the highlights. I imagine this is difficult with IR.

[PRSearls]

Thank you for the comments. I'm still learning the exposure characteristics of my converted sensor. In sunlight, the camera's built-in light sensor is pretty close but I found in shadow, it can be off quite a bit. Bracketing is still a good option when in doubt. I check the histogram often and if it gets close to the highlight end, I usually end up with blown highlights. With light-colored flowers, I usually need to turn the highlight slider all the way down to recover detail even though the scene appeared to be correctly exposed. Exposure is an interesting challenge with some subjects. I am still enjoying the conversion and the IR b&w look. I've tried various techniques for color IR but it is not my style.