Location : This sunset was captured during the ‘Forgotten France’ photographic workshop this spring. The location is just around the corner from the gîtes we stay at in Villeneuve near Crozant.

It was just at sunset when I captured this image using a tripod-mounted Canon 5DmkII camera and a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L lens set to 50mm. This camera has been modified to capture IR (Infrared) light and also block visible light, so the colours captured are not normal. I used Live View focusing at 10x on the wheat. The camera was set to manual exposure mode, 1/60th of a second, f/8, ISO 100 and daylight white balance. The RAW processing, false colouring and final adjustments were all done in Photoshop CC.

The $20 question is why did I shoot this in IR (Infrared)? The two main visual qualities that really please me about using IR is the effect on the tonal qualities of the image. The first is that chlorophyll (the green colour in healthy plants) is very reflective to IR wavelengths giving a white ‘snowy’ look to vegetation. The second is skies as the water vapor does not scatter very much IR as it does the blue light therefore the blue part goes very dark and yet thin white clouds reflect a lot. The effect is you get a large boost of contrast in the sky as thick clouds also go very dark. In this image the wheat has been dramatically lightened especially where the sun’s rays have hit it. The sky has had a large boost in detail and contrast; the clouds were much thinner and lighter with visible light.