Color Blind

Bourbon Neat

Senior Member
This was shot 2 hours and 12 minutes after sunset, this is (as shot/no pp).

Photography is enjoyable for sure. It does have inherent struggles for me due to a moderate/high degree of color blindness. In 60 years it has never occurred to me that a night sky is blue, I see black skies and white stars while outdoors at night.

What I thought were a bunch of under exposed shots with black sky turns out to be blue sky and blue stars after added exposure. In lightroom the 'as shot' raw image looks to me like black sky with light blue stars.

What colors do you see in this image, pre and post processing? Do you see blue or black skies when outdoors in the dark hours?

Nightsky05-2588.jpg
 
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Moab Man

Senior Member
Picture is blue in the bottom center and radiates out to black with a blue tint. However, I am not looking at this on my color calibrated monitor but expect it's close enough.

Thought of specializing in black and white photography?
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
I take my hat off to you,processing raw images with a degree of color blindness cant be easy,i have a mate that is color blind to certain colors and i could never understand why autumn colors didn't excite him, until he told me he just saw one shade of brown.
 

Bourbon Neat

Senior Member
Thought of specializing in black and white photography?
No, never before. Shot all the family stuff as the kids grew (in film) and it worked out fine I think. Dropping the film for processing most always had good results.

If it stays clear for tonight, I will shoot b&w just to see the reults. Wait, Lightroom should be able to make b&w out of color, yes?
 

J-see

Senior Member
I see blue "light" from the middle bottom up to the center of the shot and there even seems to be some yellowish/orange in it which is probably the same light pollution that turns the trees at the corners orange.

Night skies can be difficult to get right and when most stars are blue, WB needs to be corrected. In your case all looks fine since I see all kinds of colored stars. I'm at my PC now which isn't calibrated very well since I no longer use it to process.

I'll check again on the Mac later on.


Btw, the night sky isn't really blue even when all too many shots push it towards that color. At low illumination our vision shifts to the blue end of the color spectrum which is called the Purkinje effect. The cam doesn't suffer that which could deliver conflicting results between what we see and what is really there.

You could say all of us are colorblind at night.

Here's a very good article on the colors of the night sky. It's pretty long but got some great shots.

Color of the Night Sky, Clarkvision.com
 
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Bourbon Neat

Senior Member
The orange is probably from a barn light about 200 feet behind the camera, it has an orange tint to it.

A few shots were taken in the western sky and revealed a comet just above the horizon, below and to the south of whatever planet is shining brightly there. I had no notice of the comet with the naked eye but it showed in Lightroom.
 

J-see

Senior Member
Yeah that is a lot of info concerning the color of night. Everything shot last night shows a good deal of blue to it, after bringing the exposure up, I can see that. Whether that is correct or not? It is what the digital camera recorded though, and according to Roger Clark, the digital sensor is far more accurate than film.

The problem is that if it looks correct I probably isn't while if it looks wrong, it could very well be right. The only way to get night colors right is by using a grey card to get the correct WB. I can take two identical shots at different ISO and have one with a blue tint while the other is orange.

I know I struggled a lot with it when I started shooting nightscapes.

Very often I looked at the shot that rolled out of the cam and wondered what was wrong with it since it didn't resemble what I was seeing. I always corrected those shots in post but didn't realize it was me that was seeing it wrong.

In the end there's no real right or wrong to this. If you like a certain color, go for it.
 

paul04

Senior Member
Like the others have said, a little bit of orange in the bottom left and right corners, hint of blue in the middle, and the rest of the sky is black.
 

everprentice

Senior Member
This was shot 2 hours and 12 minutes after sunset, this is (as shot/no pp).

Photography is enjoyable for sure. It does have inherent struggles for me due to a moderate/high degree of color blindness. In 60 years it has never occurred to me that a night sky is blue, I see black skies and white stars while outdoors at night.

What I thought were a bunch of under exposed shots with black sky turns out to be blue sky and blue stars after added exposure. In lightroom the 'as shot' raw image looks to me like black sky with light blue stars.

What colors do you see in this image, pre and post processing? Do you see blue or black skies when outdoors in the dark hours?

View attachment 146116
I couldn't imagine seeing the world in a different way. I applaud you never giving up photography. Our photos are reflections of how we percieve reality so your photos are as valid as ours. In fact your challenges may be a way for us to see the world through your eyes. Would you mind sharing more of the challenges and photos to go with it?
 

everprentice

Senior Member
And by the way, I see so many colors in the clear dark night sky. I don't if it is just me or because I live in a rural town. But I do have sensitive eyesight, deteriorating however.
 

Moab Man

Senior Member
This reminds me of a news story a few months ago where they have discovered that some rare people can see in the infrared spectrum. For the longest time people didn't realize they were seeing things differently because green, no matter what a person sees it as, is green to them if that is the way they have been taught to identify the color they see.
 

Bourbon Neat

Senior Member
Holy crap..... Thanks for the link.

After a little more research, I quoted from enchroma website the following:

"Humans with normal color vision see about one million unique shades of color."

"People with red-green color blindness can usually see between 10,000 to 100,000 shades of color."

At best, I get 10% of what is there to see. Seriously? Never knew it was so drastic.
 
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