False-color infrared photos! Each of these is a composite of three different exposures; the red channel in the image was shot using a 720nm IR-pass filter, the green channel with a red filter, and the blue channel with a green filter. With the right subject and lighting conditions (IR photography works best on a clear day, and taking all three photos takes a minute or two so static subjects are best), this is an affordable¹ way to mimic the look of the legendary Kodak Ektachrome Infrared.

I shot and processed these the same way you do normal RGB trichromes - set the camera up on a tripod, compose, then shoot through three different filters. I re-metered for each exposure, using an unfiltered reading with a +6-stop exposure correction for IR and then TTL metering with the filter on for red and green. Seems like it worked well enough - none of the negatives look particularly overexposed or underexposed, and I think the results really speak for themselves. The compositing was of course digital², and I used Photoshop to align and color the individual frames.

Then, of course, the photos themselves are stunning. As I hoped, they've got the classic color IR look where all the plants turn that otherworldly pink color - that's because living foliage is highly reflective in IR as well as visible green light, so IR (red in the image) plus green (blue in the image) makes magenta. In fact, one of the practical uses of infrared film is in aerial vegetation surveys, since a single IR photo can tell you at a glance how well any plants in the image are doing. Past that, you can also see some effects from the false-color process. Most notably, the street sign in that first image is green in real life, and that's how you can tell these photos are the real thing since to the naked eye it should be basically the same color as the plants behind it. And, of course, the rainbow shimmer visible in a few places is an artifact of the three-exposure composite.

I'm definitely going to try and shoot more photos like this in the future. I've got a lot of Fomapan 200 around, which while it's not an "IR film" it is slightly infrared-sensitive, and people say it's possible to shoot it with a 720nm filter to get IR effects. Assuming that works I suspect it'll be a frequent technique in my arsenal.