I spent this afternoon at the Bethlehem Cemetery. Officially known as the Bethlehem Cemetery Association, it was established 140+ years ago on 30 acres in the town of Bethlehem (Delmar), NY. Only about 3/4 mile from my (northern) home, I took at walk there to see if there were some interesting photo opportunities. Indeed there were!
Although it was HOT (90 in the sun), the shade was pleasant. As the sun began to get lower in the sky, there were some interesting shadow plays with the headstones and the trees. I used my Canon 300D converted to IR + the Canon 50mm f1.8 lens.
I tried post-processing using Photoshop CS5 and created an action to do the red-blue color swap in the color mixer. Then I did a bit of exposure correction in levels and curves. The results were OK. The sky was blue but I did not especially care for the effect. My camera was converted to almost completely eliminate visible light so there is little opportunity for the so-called “faux colors” of UV filters letting in less than 720nm of light.
So, I went back to working in Lightroom where exposure and other elements were adjusted as I would with any other photo. I then brought the images into Nik Silver Effects Pro and applied my personal B&W preset as a starting point. Most of the time, the effect was fine.
I did experiment with getting the sky a bit more dramatic in some of the photos using the “U-point” technology of the Nik software. In the second of these two images, I then applied the Nik Color Effects Pro tonal contrast filter to bring out details. I love the effect of the IR with the backlighting of the leaves in the tree. It is a great foreground element and nicely frames the subject of the photo.