What Is Reality?
Do you know it when you see it? Do you care?
It seems that we are hardwired to appreciate the beauty of sunsets.
Isn’t it amazing how some people seem to be able to capture incredible looking sunsets all the time?
These people are seeing the same sunsets as you. The difference between what you saw and the fabulous pictures presented is post-capture processing, which can make a glorious sunset out of an average one. And it’s just a tweak of one or two controls.
The hardest part is deciding when enough is enough. Knowing when glorious becomes a cartoon.
The same is true of other images.
Which is real? Or perhaps better stated, which is closer to real, since there are always compromises when the full rainbow of available sunlight, direct or diffuse, is reflected off a subject and captured by a camera system.
In the late 1900’s, ABC (Almost Before Cellphones), there were two main photographic film companies. Eastman Kodak enjoyed a near monopoly in the USA and much of the world. Management was quite happy with this arrangement. Fujifilm enjoyed a near monopoly in Japan. But that company’s management was not quite as happy, and determined that in order to grow, Fuji needed to expand into the US market.
The scientists at Kodak worked long and diligently to ensure that the color reproduction of their film was true to reality. The film from Fuji, however, provided images that were much more saturated. Roses rendered ruby-red, every sky had that mountain-blue look, and grass was always the envy of the other man.
“Ick! That’s not real!” announced the bespectacled Kodak Chemists upon seeing prints from Fuji film. Satisfied, they went back to stirring cauldrons of chemicals.
Over time, the Fuji film started eating away at the “Big Yellow Box”* share of US sales. The Kodak Marketing people noticed.
“Hey, what’s going on here? We’re losing market share to Fuji.”
“Really?” replied the Chemists. “How can that be? Our film provides a much more realistic reproduction than the Fuji film.”
“Because our customers don’t care! Who wants to remember a drab day with Donald Duck at Disney?”**
Soon, Kodak film also started providing brighter colors, reality be damned. Give the customers what they want, not what’s “right”!!
Then digital photography came along and made all this chemistry moot.
Currently, one need not select film types or camera types or paper or chemistry or wizardry to achieve “The Fuji Effect.” All you need is commonly available software. Like the fine RESTORE program provided by Yours Truly and friends. Enhance 10 sunsets for free!
Warm-hearted code with visual might,
Improves the colours*** in our sight.
Gray is red, and yellow bright.
But we decide which is right,
And which is an illusion.
Just remember that even though every photo tells a story, as often as not, it’s fake news.
— — —
*Kodak film sold in yellow boxes. Hence the company where all those little yellow boxes were created became known as The Big Yellow Box.
**A significant percentage of Kodak film sales were at Disney Amusement Parks.
***Spelled in this manner as a nod to the British origins of the Moody Blues, with apologies to them for opportunistic appropriation of their fine poetry.
