“Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.” – Paul Gauguin

It’s kind of hilarious that I am in photography school where we talk about colors and white balance every single minute it seems and I’m actually genetically colorblind. Red-Green Deuteranopia is my particular flavor and I actually had to inherit a recessive gene from both parents to get it. It can make color a mysterious language indeed. It is extremely difficult to help others to understand what I see. I am constantly asked, when it comes up, to explain what I see. Since I have no idea what you see, its is impossible for me to describe the differences any more than you can describe the difference in what you see. There are all sorts of websites where you can look up photos of the differences if you are interested. You will be able to see the differences – but both photos look the same to me. My instructor, Kevin Eames, pulled up an example of the Macbeth Color Checker that we use all the time in photography the other day to show everyone what we colorblind folk (shout out to MIA!) see. Of course I could not see it.

When I started photography school, I was really afraid to tell them I was colorblind. I kind-of figured it would come up at some point, but also figured I would wait to see when it did. Then, one day in design class that first semester, a second-year student dropped in for the day with this crazy photo of a sign in Memphis. It was wild. So many neon, glowing colors! I asked him if he took that photo – as I was very impressed. He explained it was for an assignment where he was given a copy of the photo with all the colors jacked up and then he had to “fix” the colors in Photoshop to match the original. I nearly had a stroke! This sounded like my worst nightmare!!! I can handle basic primary colors pretty well, but when you start talking about shades and tints and whatever the crazy colors in that photo were – that’s just out of my scope. I immediately went to Dhanraj and confessed and then I went to Kevin and confessed again – I cannot match ridiculous colors!!! They both assured me it would be fine and even though I may not do so well on some assignments, it would be okay. I took comfort and carried on. And now, that horrible assignment is upon me.

I would say at this writing, I have clocked well over 20 hours of editing on that @#&%!! photo trying to “fix” the colors. I no longer am impressed by the picture and I may never go to Memphis just on principle – it has tortured me enough. I’m sure my classmates will be glad for me to turn this in because I’ve asked all of them as well as several instructors for pointers and help. Hey does this look right? What do you mean there is too much cyan? How do those RGB numbers work again? What the heck is cyan and how can you possibly detect it in an orange building? The sky is purple?? Wait, what? It has been a challenge, but I think I’ve come pretty close in the end. I will turn in my best effort on Monday morning and hope it passes muster. I can honestly say I gave it my best shot. (I’m not sure I’m supposed to share the original – but I will share my edits to give you some idea of the challenge) As I look at it now, I think it needs another 20 hours! UGH!