If you're only going 1 meter of distance you won't need a transistor. A good IR led like what you have will probably do about 5 meters at the 20ma limit of an AVR pin. You might actually mess things up if you go full power on the IR LED and it starts reflecting off of objects.
Also I recommend you start with a visible red or white LED. Much easier to see things working that way / common sense kinda thing.