I felt in love with infrared photography about eight years ago.

What immediately caught my eyes was the strange ambience and weird lighting. It was a series of infrared black-and-white images in a magazine. So colour I bought a good old Sony F – 707 and I had fun discovering the unseen. In fact to our human eyes infrared is not visible. Each and everyday our sun sends to the earth a multitude of electromagnetic waves. I wanted to know more about infrared or should I say near infrared photography so I started to buy some other digital cameras. I did not only short with them. I was modifying them. I started all kinds of experimentations with filters and obviously that led me into this magical world and epic universe that is Digital Infrared Colour Photography. Of course, along with shooting there is a postproduction phase. And it can be quite difficult to get the right information all in one place. I had the ambition to share with other passionate people the world of infrared photography. So I began to build a huge collection of actions in Photoshop. I also developed my own set of tools to post process infrared photography. Teaming up with my friend Blake Rudis from f64 Academy, professional photographer and educator, really created the first of all inclusive infrared mastery course. CLiR (pronounced ”clear”) is behind the concept of Creative Light and infraRed.

Nowadays our technology is powerful enough to offer us more. CLiR Infrared Mastery course for Photoshop was released at the end of March 2019. I came to know that Kolari Vision had modified the DJI MAVIC 2 Pro (M2P) drone. Kolari had made a dream come true! I might get my hands on a flying infrared camera! Yey!

Coming from the world video, as in my previous life I was deeply involved into colour correction, I’ve always been fascinated about different solutions and approach on how to process infrared images. While CLiR is a solution mostly designed for Photoshop, the same concepts applies here. In fact we can process still images that the drone can shoot but also have all the benefits of showing video.

I have been instantly grabbed into this new challenge: applying my expertise in digital Infrared imagery, and to developing a predictable solution for processing M2P videos. It was a challenge at many levels. I had to find a simple enough solution that  would be compatible with the world of video editing software. The M2P drone being modified as Full Spectrum means that you could possibly fit any kind of filters in front of the lens. So that it multiplies options but I couldn’t see this parameter increasing the workflow complexity. Knowing that the Maverick to pro isn’t designed for dealing with ultra-violet (UV), Visible Light (VIS) and Near infraRed (NiR or iR here). The method used to process M2P infrared stills is based on the same concept developed in the CLiR Infrared Mastery Course. The challenge, the big one, came as dealing with the video now.

This course we’ll teach you how to make your journey through infrared the more comfortable as possible.

Today I am really proud to present the first solution for shooting and processing infrared photos and video with a MAVIC 2 Pro drone.