My obsession with colour casts

[loose cannon]

Sort of a mini rant, bear with me.

This is the first landscape image I ever captured. After a long beach walk with not a bird in sight I glanced behind me and noticed my footprints in the sand and took a quick snap and thought nothing much of it at the time. Maybe a good leading line but not much else.

But as you can see the colours are quite extraordinary, orange sand and red/maroon mud! What I saw with my eyes at the time was white sand and grey mud. this is the beauty of colour casts and the reason I always shoot in the raw format. The eye sees what it expects to see, white sand and grey mud, but if you give the camera a chance it will capture what is really there.

Spring tides bring the water up to the red pindan cliffs (unseen in this image) and as a result of that the sand and mud are discoloured for a few days. Apparently our brain removes colour casts and as I said, we see what we expect to see. There was a pinkish cast over the sky, mangrove trees and ocean which I removed because it looked pretty yucky but the mud and sand have been left as captured.

This image really opened my eyes to the wonderful world of photography and has had a dramatic impact on how I process my images. Colour casts can be friend or foe but they are very real. These days I'm mindful of them and my thought process when I drag an image into photoshop is to produce an image which showcases what was really there, not necessarily what I saw at the time with my eyes.

My non-photographer friends occasionally critisize some of my images and say, "that's been photoshopped to death" but they are perplexed when I tell them that my images have had less "photoshopping" than any image they have captured on their iphone. Don't get me wrong, I love my iphone but for me nothing beats capturing what was there rather than what I saw.

End of mini rant.


Feel free to share your thoughts.

[Alan]

Interesting topic. My iPhone certainly does a lot of pre-processing compared to my RAW SLR pics. Hard to imagine that you saw grey mud and the camera saw these colours. But I've tried to capture the Aurora and saw nothing, but on opening the image in PS , there it was!

Was your recent photo of the mangrove tree and cloud taken at the same time - it seems to be much less saturated than this image.

With the increasing use of AI it's already harder to tell what is real.

"The Moody Blues lyric, "But we decide which is right. And which is an illusion," is from their song "Nights in White Satin". The line is part of a larger verse that describes how our perception can be subjective, even when faced with seemingly objective realities.

Nice composition and colours. But my brain can't come to grips with the closest 'raised' footprint and the shadow..?

Cheers

[loose cannon]

The footprints are simply an optical illusion Alan, if you keep looking at them they change from raised to an indent. Does for me anyway. This image is from many years ago and the raw file was lost to a black screen of death event on an early computer long before I started backing up to external hard drives. So I have no memory or record of my processing but I'll concede my processing skills were in there infancy and maybe I went a bit hard on this image, but those colours are quite real on spring tides. The spring tides hit the pindan cliffs and some colouring of the sand is inevitable.

That other mangrove tree image is relatively recent (maybe 5 years) and I recall the red mud was clearly visible at the time. I think the pindan soil becomes trapped by the mangrove roots and becomes a semi permanent feature. I see that all the time. But I remember being quite stunned by the raw image of the posted image. Pretty much any landscape image up here has a strong colour cast due to the red pindan soil. The sky and trees always have a magenta colour cast. One click of the mouse in photoshop and its gone but it is ever present.

The shadows and level of the tide tell me that image tell me it was a morning capture (9amish)and the light may have been a significant factor, I was shooting into the sun here, I can't say. I might revisit this spot on a spring tide and see what I can capture, could be an interesting exercise. I'll wait for the wet season though, the light at that time of year can produce some spectacular results. A few years back I captured some bird images near some mangroves and the early morning wet season light was off the charts beautiful. Doesn't happen all the time but only happens in the wet. I'll dig them up a post later.

And our perception can be subjective and I'm led to believe that in a court of law first hand eye witness testimony is largely distrusted because people see (and recall) what they want to. Our brains are not quite the machine we think.

Thanks for responding Alan, always a pleasure to chat.

[HansE]

I was amazed recently to find on the camera the colours looked nothing like they did on camera raw whilst going through an aquarium. a mixture of natural and different artificial lights.

[loose cannon]

Getting accurate colour temp can be difficult under mixed lighting

[Alan]

The footprints are simply an optical illusion Alan, if you keep looking at them they change from raised to an indent. Does for me anyway. .

I also have a photo of footprints that do that too

[loose cannon]

Yes, I've got a few of those from the beach. always interesting

[HansE]

Artifact in a Buddhist temple. This was the same. if you looked at it it looked like a statue but close inspection showed it to be a bowl.

[loose cannon]

Good one Hans, I love optical illusions

[Isac]

Very interesting banter here guys. I've always believed that what we see is exactly what our brains interpret for us to see the true colours in a scene. I also believe that camera sensors can only record and capture a scene or object within the capability of its conversion software. As humans we can see much more dynamic range and colour, than a camera sensor. Usually if the photo taken by a camera is way different in its colours to what we see or perceive with our own eyes, the eye is more than likely the winner with its far superior perception.

I found these two things about eyes and camera sensors which I'm inclined to accept as somewhat factual.

Dynamic Range: The human eye boasts a remarkable dynamic range. It can adjust swiftly to different lighting conditions, allowing us to see details in both shadows and highlights. Even the most highly sophisticated camera sensors cannot come close to the detail and colour that our eyes can see in shadows and highlights in an overall scene. This capability, known as adaptation, enables us to perceive more detail than a camera’s sensor can typically capture in a single shot.

Colour Perception: Our eyes are particularly adept at perceiving colour variations. We can differentiate between subtle shades, thanks to the cone cells in our retinas. When captured on a camera, this aspect can sometimes result in a misrepresentation of the scene, especially if the camera’s white balance is not set correctly or other settings are not appropriate for the scene.

Anything my camera dishes up that looks different to what I actually saw, I call art

Your image above, to me is very arty and I love the colours.

[loose cannon]

Very interesting banter here guys. I've always believed that what we see is exactly what our brains interpret for us to see the true colours in a scene.

.

I'll disagree here Isac. Now, because of where I live almost all of my landscape images have a strong magenta colour cast if there is a lot of pindan in the image. This is inevitable. Our eyes see the colour cast but the brain "photoshops" the colour cast out and we see what evolution has programmed us to see, ie; sky is blue and trees are green. We can't see the colour cast and in most instances, but not all, a jpeg image will remove it. By shooting in the raw format I capture the colour cast and this gives me the option of removing it or not, or partial removal, whatever tickles my fancy. So our eyes are not as efficient as we are led to believe.

All cameras, including iphones capture images in the raw format and convert to jpeg. I choose the raw format as it gives me total control over the processing rather than some dude in Japan. A lot of the time I'll end up with an image that will be the same as if I'd shot a jpeg. I notice with my iphone14 that it does a horrible job of rendering the sky colour. There is quite a difference in sky colour during the wet and dry seasons but my iphone gives the same colour sky regardless of season. The wet season sky can have a slight grey hue while dry season is deep blue. Iphone software is programmed to deliver the "photoshopped" look that our brain wants to see. Blue sky, damn near same blue every image, drives me nuts.

I did a little experiment a few years ago at the beach at sundown, I'd read about this and decided to have a go. With a friend sitting beside me I stared into the shadows for about 15 minutes then glanced at my friends arm. I could clearly see the pink colour cast caused by the sinking sun but within a few seconds it was gone and I saw the "true" colour of light brown. Also I saw the white sand had a slight pinkish glow but is was all over in a few seconds and returned to white. Our brains are not to be trusted.

A friend of mine captured a fantastic image of a whale breaching at Cable beach. But with about 90% of the image being blue ocean and blue sky the white underbelly of the whale has a strong blue colour cast. If she had shot in raw it would have been simple to remove but jpeg locked it in. It was too strong for the built in software to remove. My friend hasn't noticed the colour cast because she sees what she wants to see, as we all do. In her minds eye the underbelly is pure white. As a photographer all I can see is the blue cast. (I haven't said a word to my friend as she is over the moon with this shot.)

[Isac]

All well explained Mick. It's a very interesting topic with so many differing ideas and opinions. I 100% know that colour casts is just about everywhere - caused by many conditions and as you mentioned which includes atmospheric conditions at any point in time.

I reckon our brains do a great job when it comes to interpreting a scene for colour and dynamic range, much better than any camera sensor. The RAW data is still only what the camera software collects and its accuracy or "truth" will always be a subject of much debate. It's also interpreted by each individual and can be governed by many factors including some of the camera settings.

I always shoot RAW because I think the camera software is just not that good when compressing and converting to JPG. I, like you, prefer to play with the RAW data to try and get a close representation of what I saw. On other occasions I like to play with the data to achieve an artistic look.

Everything in images we view subjective, but invokes some great verbal interaction.

Thank you Mick, good chat