I had always wondered about this because the scene feels unusually whimsical. The "Ruins" is a section of Tower Grove Park, which includes a pond and fountain, that was assembled from artistically arranged stonework taken from the real ruins of the Lindell Hotel, which burned to ground in 1857, only four years after it was built. The idea to recycle the stone came from none other than Henry Shaw. This is a picture of some of that stone along a footpath behind the pond. Nik Silver Efex Pro produced this monochrome conversion using a red filter, with the sepia/blue split tone applied in Lightroom 3.
The picture started off with a Cokin P007 infrared filter and three 1 stop brackets. This is the lightest shot as it came out of the camera.
This is how the image looked coming out of Nik HDR Efex, using my "Dark Vintage" preset, after setting the custom white balance in Lightroom 3 by using the eyedropper on a leaf highlight. You can see that the process lifted quite bit of detail from the stone work and improve separation with the foliage.
The final step before monochrome conversion is to use Photoshop to swap the red and blue color channels and adjust the levels to further expand the dynamic range.
I always take an unfiltered reference shot as part of the infrared workflow. 
Lens: Nikkor AF 24-85mm f2.8-4 IF
Camera: Nikon D100
Exposure: ISO 200, three brackets around 48mm @ f/11 @ 1/4s, Cokin P007 filter, Auto WB, tripod, RAW
Lighting: Daylight
Location: Tower Grove Park, St. Louis GPS
Dates: Capture - October 5, 2008, Processing - October 23, 2010
Processing: Lightroom 3, Nik HDR Efex, Nik Silver Efex Pro, Photoshop CS5
1 comment:
I love to experiment as well.
Trying to work with my IR filter, but not to successful yet.
I'll come buy to see more of your progress.
This is just great.
Max
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