Accurate versus 'emotionally correct' colour.

 

I wonder how many photographers have shot a sunset using Auto White Balance, and then wondered where the glorious red, oranges and yellows went in the produced image?

 

Of course, nobody here would have made such a tyro mistake(!), but that scenario got me to wondering if clinically precise colour accuracy was a good aim in most pictorial images.

 

I suspect there's an element of synaesthesia in all of us, that makes us have an emotional response to colours.

 

Probably nobody wants to see a green tint to skin tones, whether they were shot under tree foliage or in the middle of a verdant lawn. But that's what we'll usually get in those circumstances with 'accurate' colour reproduction. As well as blue shadows under a cloudless sky.

 

I guess I'm really making a case for going with what 'looks right' rather than blindly applying some colour profile or other and getting scientifically accurate colour. Because that's what I often did when darkroom colour-printing, long before the days of digital colour profiling from colour-checker cards and suchlike.

 

OTOH, I'm not suggesting we abandon such aids, but more take them as a suggestion, rather than a rigid regime.

 

What say you?

Edited March 25, 2021 by rodeo_joe|1

Many decades ago, in a classroom at RIT, Hollis N. Todd held up a big green card. He said something like, "how many of you think this is the color of grass?" Nobody did, so he took us all outside and tossed the card out in the grass. It disappeared because the color match was so good. Expectations matter and viewing conditions matter. BTW, I shoot sunsets on "auto" all the time and they usually look terrible. Then I go mess with the RAW image.

I agree, especially with personal work. On the other hand, when I photograph a painting for an artist or museum, I make sure that I have a white balance card in the shot to use in camera raw (cropped out later). My clients are happy with the color reproduction that I get with this method, which means that I get paid and hired again, so I'm happy as well. The sunset/sunrise picture is exhibit A for why automation doesn't always work in my experience, especially if, as in your example, there is a dark foreground. My wife's iPad usually lightens the sky too much in this situation. I think this has as much to do with exposure automation as it does with color balancing automation, but we humans still have an edge over the computer chips in determining the colors that we want to see in a final image.

For paid work, a person or a product, correct color is critical (though in these days is certainly adjustable based on customer request). For the rest, IMO, the eye of the photographer and audience is all that matters.

I'll admit to not being a big fan of greenish fluorescent lights, but otherwise I often appreciate the other tones of artificial lighting, as it was and is.

 

For things like paintings and sech-like, I often use the "o-zone method" of correcting "the lightest to the whitest, and the darkest to the blackest" - the result usually matches the original as seen by the human eye surprisingly well.

 

Sometimes, it's just nice to have mixed light.

 

Here is

Edited March 25, 2021 by JDMvW

When I scan chrome film, I adjust the colors to my liking. I do not try to match the original colors of the film. In fact, after the scan, I don't even look at the film. First off, each film has a different color palette. So what is accuracy? Second, the palette developed by the manufacturer, let's say my favorite Velvia 50, is what some developers, now probably dead, liked 45 years ago. It was their taste. Although I like the overall colors, that's why I use Velvia, I don't have to match some dead guy's taste exactly. The film is just a start point. If you shoot negative color film, you can't really match anything anyway.

 

Of course, this is when I'm shooting landscapes, not people where skin color has to be more accurate to my eye and others so as not to look weird.

Accurate versus 'emotionally correct' colour.

Interesting topic.

 

I'd say "emotionally expressive" color, to get away from the notion of correctness, which I don't particularly care for when it comes to emotions.

 

Also, when I'm working with color, though I'm focused on emotion or at least coming from a place of emotion a lot of the time, sometimes it feels purely visual. ... what works at the moment. ... what relates to the other colors and to the content.

 

Reason also may play a role. Even if I'm going with a palette that stretches things, I may want those colors to have some kind of reasonable explanation ... that if the colors weren't this way when I shot, they could have been this way for some reason or other,.

 

Photographic color, IMO, is a translation, not an identity or absolute representation. Even accuracy in color photography is still a matter of translating nature's colors onto a screen image or printed photo. There is more than one way to photographically translate all the colors working together in a scene and I don't believe there is one "correct" way.

 

And, who knows what colors most viewers actually see on their monitors, calibrated and uncalibrated with varying degrees of warmth or coolness and distorted views. Though I finesse my colors a lot to get them to appear the way I want, it's amusing and I accept it as part of contemporary photography that there's a fair amount of randomness and unknowns in what people will be looking at when they're not looking at my prints or on my monitor. I'm conscious of that, too, when working with color. It's ok. It has to be.

Emotionally expressive or correct? I'd say the two were interchangeable from their creator's point of view. If it wasn't deemed correct for its expressive purpose, then why pick a particular tint, colour or pallette?

 

I also find it interesting that the total absence of colour - black & white - can often evoke more emotion than a colour version of the same picture. Which kind of ruptures the proposal of my first post a little.

 

However, when there was nothing but monochrome photography available, people seemed to put great store on the warm or cold-toning of prints.

 

The psychology of perception is a strange and subtle thing.

If you shoot negative color film, you can't really match anything anyway.

I found that the main attraction of colour negative film; the ability to mould the end result to how one perceived the scene to look. Within the limited bounds of what the chemical technology of the era allowed at least. Now digital manipulation has expanded those possibilities enormously.

Hey, I still put great store on the warm or cold-toning of prints, even if digital. It's amazing how much better a subtly toned black and white image looks in a web posting. Sepia is common but I often like the slightly greenish "platinum" tint.

In re: Coloring - there were some high experts with Marshalls Photo Oils back in the day.

Emotionally correct for me, whatever that may mean.

 

Maybe it comes from a film background, but I'm rather fond of leaving at least a suggestion of the 'warmth' of incandescent light on photos shot indoors. It's not what our eyes see, but it's what I 'expect' to see in a photograph taken under artificial light.

I guess I'm really making a case for going with what 'looks right' rather than blindly applying some colour profile or other and getting scientifically accurate colour.

 

Well yeah, ultimately things gotta look right.

 

But... when looking at something like studio portrait prints, the more or less standard style, it turns out that something pretty close to measurably "correct" color generally looks about the best. This is not exactly correct because the print actually needs a slight mid-tone contrast boost (the "why" is a whole 'nother topic [Todd and Zakia discuss it briefly in their book]). I'm speaking from considerable practical experience, including shooting tests with multiple models as well as a significant number actual studio subjects. It's probably been way more testing than most people here would guess, and there's just not much doubt about the results.

 

Now, in something like rodeo_joe's sunset shot these rules don't apply. For one, a sunset can't be duplicated on a print because of the brightness issue. Secondly, it can't be measured in the terms we normally use for photography; the color spaces we use are referenced to a "white," and I don't see that such a thing exists in a sunset. So we are pretty much left to however the photographer wants it to look (and there is no one to dispute whether it is "correct" or not).

 

Probably nobody wants to see a green tint to skin tones, whether they were shot under tree foliage or in the middle of a verdant lawn.

 

Well, I would say that this is not exactly true. If you photograph someone standing on the lawn we sort of expect for the shadows under their chin, etc., to have a slight greenish tinge. If that tinge is NOT there then the image tends to appear fake (this is a big deal when if you use a green screen to replace the scene). The human eye is surprisingly good at detecting things that don't fit; a person may not be able to say specifically what's wrong, they just get a sense that it's not right.

 

But the greenish color should not be over the entire face. Humans just have a way of "normalizing" the ambient light, a sort of automatic "white balance" for the scene, so our eyes tend to cancel out this sort of thing. You could probably put a slight amount of green in the face to suggest that the subject is under green trees, but too much just looks bad, as though it was poorly printed.

 

Fwiw most people are not very finicky about color in their photos, so they mostly don't care that much as long as it's reasonably close. And the longer they look at a print the more it seems more or less ok. So it may only be when it's seen next to other prints that the deficiencies stick out.

In my experience I've learned that the "human eye" isn't necessarily a particularly good evaluator of "accurate color". Different people have differing levels of color sensitivity. For instance, I have learned to not rely on my son-in-law's interpretation of colors, since he has been diagnosed as partially color blind, yet an integral part of his work requires him to interpret color codes for safety reasons. I, myself, see colors slightly muted due to deteriorating eye conditions. Perhaps that's why, in recent years, I've spent more time with B&W works than color.

Many people’s emotionally correct color vision is placed at “11” on the saturation slider also known as “The Steve McCurry Sweet Spot”.

I’m an amateur so I don’t have to meet anybody else’s expectations, and to me the best color is what looks good in the image I’m trying to make. (But if I’m doing, say, reproduction of one of my wife’s artworks, I’m shooting a reference card and going the whole nine yards.)

I use a 'technically correct" WB as a starting point and adjusst as necessary from there. Most of my photos are of people so skin tone/color (masked or not) is leading. A slightly warmer temperature than 'neutral greys' often looks more attractive than 'neutral greys'.

Emotionally correct for me, whatever that may mean.

 

Maybe it comes from a film background, but I'm rather fond of leaving at least a suggestion of the 'warmth' of incandescent light on photos shot indoors. It's not what our eyes see, but it's what I 'expect' to see in a photograph taken under artificial light.

 

Seems to me that a little warmth tends to be good, and a little cooling tends to be bad.

 

I do remember skylight filters from film days, and might have some on digital cameras.

 

Skylight filters remove UV, which film is sensitive to, some will get through the glass, and gives a blue look.

But skylight filters, different than UV filters, also add a tiny bit of warmth (1A), and a little more (1B).

 

Especially in the case of skin, we tend to like warmth, even a lot, but even a tiny bit of green looks bad.

 

Other than skin, maybe not so much, but yes I like extra warmth from incandescent lamps.

Of course, sometimes greens and blues are just what the photographer wants to do with skin. I don't think Nan Goldin was concerned with her subjects looking pleasant, though.

 

Suzanne and Philippe on the Train, Long Island, NY

 

And warm isn't always so pleasant either, and it's not necessarily flattering.

 

Cookie at Tin Pan Alley

Probably nobody wants to see a green tint to skin tones,

I’d have to disagree.

Susan Oliver comes to mind....

Little question she was emotionally compelling in green, not to mention all of her other accomplishments.

Edited March 26, 2021 by Moving On

No right or wrong OP. If not working for a paying client, then do as you like.

 

Beautiful sunset!

Years ago, many BW shots were artfully painted. How do these color motifs and palettes fit into the discussion? (PS> That's my sister about 80 years ago)

It is the slightly green skin tones that look bad.

 

If it is so green that it could only be face paint, then it doesn't look bad.

 

Also, shooting under mercury lamps, (with no phosphors) makes everything

green, so our brain, at least partly, corrects for the lighting. We still know that

it is green, but don't specifically think of green skin.

 

With cool white fluorescent, that almost happens, too.

 

But when the green is so slight that most of the scene looks

close enough to right, but the skin wrong, then we don't like it.

 

The train picture is overall green, but also we might think of trains

as cold, so adjust for that, too. If the scene is warm and sunny,

we don't expect cold skin.

I usually just use auto, shoot in raw and work on color in post. But I'm sure its not that accurate out of the camera. Sometimes the distortion is nice and part of the process, ie how the sensor reacts to different light. But for accurate color I think it really helps to calibrate on a grey card though I'm too lazy to do it.

Seems to me that color and skin tone and shadow & light and skin tone are not a matter of this or that being wrong per se. It’s more a matter of context and the photo being well done and/or convincing. There are so many different types of photos and possibilities for using various unusual color choices that an attempt to carve out certain no-no color and subject combinations or certain allowable exceptions to those general rules would be unproductive if not downright counterproductive. The challenge is simply to make what you do work, and sometimes what at first might seem odd or different actually moves the needle.

There is a certain nostalgia triggered in the brain methinks that is directly related to times and places past, that is the result of those “off true” colors.

Some of it even results over time as tones degrade. When I see the photo below the color change corresponds to the passage of time in my brain even though it occurred over time. Those painted photos also have a similar quality to them. Photography is hardly limited to simple accurate documentation even though getting it “right” certainly has its place. This nostalgic trigger is one of the most appealing aspects of shooting black and white film today. Reminds me of working on the yearbook in high school. I grew up in the age when color was a huge new sales pitch and I guess the black and white films will always be for me and inescapable nostalgic component in my emotional reaction to photographs and movies.

 

The great thing about these prime times we live in is that we can restore and alter it all to suit both accuracy and emotion to our liking. We get to have both.

Edited March 26, 2021 by Moving On