After reading Castaneda, Sunny aspired to be a moonflower.

Hi Lex. This caught my eye and made me curious about your process with the image. Was this made using a dedicated infrared sensor, for instance? Is the under-saturated color near infrared captured visible spectrum. Or was all the magic in the photo editing software or darkroom printing? Maybe others wonder how you worked this as well???

The mention of Catenada recalled all the interest in perception that was so strong in the youth of the baby boomer generation. Appropriate for visual artists, you think?

Sorry to be long winded--you do tend to provoke thought.

Thanks for your comments, Mark.  All of the infrared photos in this folder (so far) were taken with a stock Nikon D2H and an odd combination of non-IR filters.  The end results are from some common digital editing techniques, such as the red/blue channel flip, and tweaking the white balance.

I remember reading around 10 years ago on Bjorn Rorslett's site that the D2H was suitable for IR and that a combination of dual polarizers might be useful for some IR photography.  I tried it briefly around 2005-'06 but wasn't sure what to make of the results and didn't know enough about digital editing to do anything with the files at the time.  I already knew the D2H was excessively sensitive to near-IR, which was the major flaw that made it unsuitable for color photography of people under some artificial lighting - particularly fluorescent and metal halide.  Skin colors were ghastly.  Very different from the D2H skin colors in daylight, particularly diffuse daylight - the in-camera JPEGs are very nice, reminiscent of a good portrait color film like Portra or Fuji NPH.  But photos of people under mixed lighting needed a lot of tweaking or conversion to b&w.

Since 2010 my D2H has become rather glitchy, with frequent "Err" messages and blank frames.  I wasn't using it for anything where I needed a dependable camera so I decided this year (2014) to try the IR experiments again.  I didn't want to spend any money on an IR conversion or even a pricey IR filter until I was sure it wasn't just a passing fancy.  With a little experimentation I discovered a combination of some filters I already had produced a nice infrared effect: a Tiffen #25A red filter; a Cokin circular polarizer; and one of those Cokin novelty filters that was so popular during the 1990s, a Pola Red-Green** color shifting polarizer.  That specific combination of filters with the D2H produces a good IR effect.

By shifting the neutral polarizer and Pola Red-Green, it can also affect blue skies a bit - the sky appears quite red in the unaltered raw/JPEGs.  The position of the polarizers doesn't have much effect on foliage.  The main advantage to this combination of filters is that I can see through them well enough to compose and focus in reasonably bright daylight.  Then by twisting the neutral circular polarizer I can shut out most visible light for the IR effect.  No need to remove a standard IR filter for composing, focusing, metering, etc., then replacing the filter for making the photo.  And the D2H will meter accurately, within 1/3 EV give or take, even through the nearly blacked out filter combo.  Very handy.  So I just set the camera to Aperture Priority, close the viewfinder eyepiece blind (essential for accurate exposure) and let the camera do the rest.  It's even accurate for hundreds of photos over several hours for time lapse video compilations - the D2H adjusts shutter speed appropriately to suit the changing light.

Depending on the desired end result for color IR, I might use the foliage as the neutral gray point for white balance, or might use something else.  It's mostly experimenting and seeing what looks "right".  Some of my color IR experiments leave the sky red, which is easier with Lightroom.  To get the more traditional/conventional blue sky effect I have to work in my old copy of Paint Shop Pro to use the channel mixer for the red/blue channel flip.

Anyway, I've enjoyed experimenting enough with IR that I might consider having a smaller mirrorless model converted to IR.  The nifty thing about these newer IR conversions is you can use 'em handheld in decent lighting with fewer worries about motion blur.  The D2H with three-filter combo is very slow, and even at ISO 800-1600 it's difficult to prevent motion blur from breezes in daylight.

**(Side note: You might recall that back in the 1990s Moose Peterson hyped a version of the Cokin colored polarizer he dubbed the "Mono Lake Filter" for his surreal photos of that lake's odd formations.  I also have a Pola Purple-Orange or some other bizarre combo, but it doesn't produce an IR effect.  Only the Pola Red-Green works with my combo of neutral circular polarizer and #25 red for IR with the stock D2H.  This combo of filters does not work well with my other digicams, only with the D2H.)

Those Castaneda books were part of a culture that influenced a generation.  And, indeed - as you noted - uncommonly appropriate for visual artists.  While Castaneda's hybrid spiritual/philosophical system wasn't significantly different from other contemporaneous systems that blossomed during that period of pop-psychology, his stories evoked images - and sensory attachments to experiences - in ways others did not.  His stories helped teach me to see something extraordinary amid the seemingly mundane.  Experiments with IR seem to help refine that way of  seeing.

Lex, Thanks for so generously taking the time for such a detailed response. I had met an area photographer who did color infrared with an unconverted point and shoot digital camera. Some manufacturer's normal sensors at the time were more sensitive to some infrared and suited his need. Cannot remember the make of camera he had, though.