In the camera U're talkin abt, the sensor is sensitive to IR (which is constantly emitted by all humans). The hardware is simply , to say it in a single word, programmed to respond only to tht part of the spectrum in the "IR mode"
here is wht an IR pic looks like

Why only IR, why not UV??
Here's a pic frm a cam tht responds to UV light (basically, the photographer used UV LED's as a light source and the scorpion is glowing due to fluorescence). The camera has been made sensitive to UV light only.....note tht even in UV light or IR light, one can make out shapes and contours (in shades) similar to how we can make out shapes in visile light due to colour differences (Red to Violet)

Hope U understand
One more thing, we can see these pictures (the ones shown above), coz the camera reads the freq of the light and converts it to a corresponding wavelength in the visible range (grey and blue in the above cases)...The actual pics ARE NOT visible to us!!
For that matter, they say a method of proving tht light is an electromag wave is to set up a AC ckt which current oscillates @ freq of visible light so tht when the ckt glows with a colour in the visible spectrum, we'll confirm tht light is electromag in origin. However, the max freq possible in modern ckts is low compared to the freq of visible light so the same expt is carried out with radio wave frequencies which are captured by camera-like devices which respond to tht region of the spectrum
cheers!!