Figure 1 – Irises on the Pond, Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2021.
Hot was the name of the game today. I, needless-to-say, set forth for my walk to the Assabet River Wildlife Refuge at high noon. The plus side was supposed to be the lack of other people. But, of course, there was a particularly noisy family. Jabber, jabber, jabber. I mean if you want to see wildlife the first rule is “to shut up.” Anyway, I came upon these irises just at the waters edge, offsetting the lily pads just now coming into bloom.
Now clearly, the color is a bit oversaturated here and then someone’s been playing with the “vibrance” toggle. You modified this! the color isn’t real! Well, my goal today was to create a sense of an impressionist painting. Mea Culpa, people! But the point is significant. The color algorithms of modern cameras and cell-phones are designed to give a “pleasing color.” The same was true of color films. Kodachrome, Ektachrome, and all the other brands, indeed all the various ISO’s give distinctive palettes. The pursuit of “true color” is an elusive target. Everyone’s eyesight is tuned slightly different to “true color.” It is a physiological not a physical concept. This is not to say that “true color” doesn’t exist. If you apply fancy scientific monitoring you can achieve it. NASA does it! But do you really want to?
I want to suggest that the final image should be true to the color vision in “your minds eye” – the physical seeing but the emotional seeing. The day was hot, the water dark, the lily pads emerging, and the irises magical!
“A rainbow is not afraid of showing its true colors because it knows it is beautiful inside out.”
―