Controlling the strength of a colour

At least this is something I can do, relying on the camera to change the exposure with a constant white balance. So here are the images untouched:-






Here are the images in order of increasing exposure, with the 'correct' metered exposure in the middle. What's clear is that the last over-exposed image is somewhat 'washed out'. Taking this to the extreme will give an image which I presume would be pure white - over exposed on all three red, green and blue channels.

Logically then the under-exposed images should have denser colour, as suggested in the course text. Have they to my eyes? Don't know! All I see is the darker images are just that, dark. In the first image, I'd describe the left side body of the flute to be perhaps green, whereas in the last images I'd say it was yellow. Similarly the right side of the instrument on the last image is a pinky colour?, whereas I'd guess the first image is dark red. The point is, right or wrong, I don't seem to have the words to describe the different shades, as I know they should really be shades of the same colour.

(an aside, I guess that makes sense - if our eyes have distinct colour sensors and mine are not working equally efficiently (eg. red less sensitive than blue), then at different levels of brightness, I will see colours start to change, and its this constant variation with brightness of illumination which perhaps confuses my brain into not being able to put a name to any colour).

As for under-exposing to create a more saturated image, I just see it as darker rather than any more saturated.

The green fleece

Further to my last post, I've now increased the saturation of the colour in Photoshop, and sure enough, my wife is right!

Photography part 3 - Colour

Right, this is going to be a tough one since I'm colourblind....

Its strange that although I had suspicions, I never really knew I was colourblind until I applied to join the RAF, at the age of 35+. All through life to that point, I saw a perfectly reasonable view of the world, through my eye's at least, with nothing to suspect an issue.

It was just small things which suggested a problem - I can't distinguish between red and amber traffic lights, although strangely I can when watching tv. I've learned that the red light is on top with amber below - what's the big deal? The bigger issue now is that with photography, I can't distinguish between the red and green lights on various battery chargers around the house, much to the amusement of my wife, to whom its blatantly obvious which batteries have charged and which have not!

So when I went to the RAF and was presented with an Ishihara test and saw just spots, it was a surprise to learn that I should have been seeing numbers!

Not only am I colourblind, but I'm convinced I'm colour dyslexic since even when I'm supposed to be able to see a colour, I can't give it a name... so blue, purple, mauve etc... I can see they're different, but they're all various shades of blue to me and I can't give a name to them individually....

All of which makes this project and assignment somewhat challenging, to the point where its not easy to know where to start.

I've had a go by asking my wife to put post-it notes to various objects around the house with their colour marked on. I'm then gone around photographing them at various exposures as per the project. But even this wasn't straightforward as I did it in the evening under partial artificial light, meaning that only can I not see the colours, the camera gets in a mess with its white balance making the colours vary again!

Anyway, here are some of the shot. No points for artistry whatsoever but amusing to see on screen the colour of things around me which I've never really seen in a true light.....






The last one is interesting. I'm convinced this fleece is grey in real life, though I accept that on the screen its not, but quite what, I'll have to trust my wife!