Invisible City

I wanted to experiment with the Toronto skyline in infrared before we caught the ferry back across the water. Fierce wind and long exposures typically don’t go hand-in-hand, but I made the best of the miserable weather and created this image.

There were some unusual lights present in this image before editing, and it took me a while to discover that it was intense ghosting from the brightest lights in the scene. Lenses have very advanced coatings to prevent such things, but my guess is that they are engineered for the visible light spectrum only – IR wavelengths are not corrected and that leads to pronounced ghosting and lens flares.

You’ll also notice that the lights on the CN Tower are off. In reality they’re on and glowing blue in this image, but those light do not put out any light in the IR spectrum and appear dark as a result.