Interactive photos give an addictive view of maize and wheat

If you work at or with CIMMYT, you’ve probably seen a lot of photos of crops in fields… but we’re betting you’ve never seen photos like these. Shared with us by CIMMYT wheat geneticist Marc Ellis, they were taken using a “Lytro” light field camera. Instead of capturing a single plane of light like a normal camera, this captures all the light traveling in every direction in every point in space within a scene. This is where it gets too technical for us, but what it means is that you can decide where to focus after you take your picture, creating an interactive image that’s incredibly fun to play with. Try clicking on the photos below in different places to change the focus, and we guarantee you’ll find it hard to stop!