Why Beyond Visible?

I believe it is important, in any endeavor, to have a clear goal, or, at least, a justification for doing it.  I have been producing photo-based-2-D-images (see next post) for many years.  With the exponential explosion of the number of these produced in the world, I see the following choices for someone into this activity, assuming the goal is to produce results interesting to others:

1. One can dedicate themselves to being "at the right place at the right time", spending lots of time and money, and likely end up producing mediocre work (much above the bland mass, much below the very best).  I always found this approach very boring, and due to my work and family situation, this is not practical for me anyway.
2. One can study:
   a) pre-exposure techniques (composition, most notably, but also multi-spectral photography, multi-exposure (for HDR, stitching, noise reduction, or super resolution), ICM (Intentional Camera Movement), long exposure, etc.)
   b) post-exposure processing techniques (Lightroom, Photoshop, HDR, stitching, 3-rd party filters, simulated paintings, etc)
   and apply these to relatively every-day, mundane scenes.  With lots of work and creativity, I believe very interesting results can be achieved using this approach, and that's what I try to practice.
3. Shoot human or animal subjects which are both unique and will garner unique interest for a certain (likely very small, unless it's Kim Kardashian's butt) subset of the population.  I fancy myself a decent portrait photographer, and yet I realize that even my best portraiture work is unlikely to be of much interest to those who don't know the people involved.

Thus, to me, multi-spectral imaging is just one of many pre-exposure techniques one can employ to produce unusual work, and it has several notable advantages compared to visible light photography:

1. IR (infra-red) and even FS (full spectrum) require good amount of technique, both pre and post exposure, and dedication to choosing and purchasing appropriate equipment, all of which significantly reduce the number of people playing in this field.  When combined with other relatively uncommon techniques, such as HDR, creative filters, and creative post-processing, it is quite easy to produce results which are very rare, if not outright unique.
2. Unlike visible light, which is best in the morning and evenings, full spectrum, and, especially, infrared, are best at noon.  Well, not necessarily best -- because it is scene dependent -- but because warm colors of the low sun are not a factor, and sheer amount of flux (especially important for UV and deep IR) is far larger at noon.  This means one can shoot when one is normally out and about (during the day), and not necessarily exclusively at sunrise and/or sunset, which is quite limiting.
3. Full Spectrum (which, for practical purposes, is pretty much VIS + near IR -- more on this later), depending on the scene, may more than double the amount of available light, thus giving about a stop of extra exposure latitude.  This may not sound like much, but keep in mind that this is about the difference in noise between a full frame and APS-C camera.
4. With a Full Spectrum camera, one has an option to use a camera as VIS-only, Full Spectrum, or any type of IR -- by just putting a different filter on the lens.  With the help of a magnetic mounting system (I use Xume, this can be done relatively quickly and easily with no screwing needed.
5. This field is highly exploratory and experimental in nature, which is important (to me, at least) to keep the excitement level high.

I will have a separate post on the downsides of invisible spectrum photography.