And to mention one more point that crossed my mind about natural. If we really are a product of a lightening bolt that hit a pond with hydrocarbons and amino acids in it billions of years ago, and evolved into what we are today...then the fact that we can use our abilities to even create a camera is also a function of nature. We are a product of nature, cameras are a product of us...cameras are a product of nature. A camera is really just an extension of the human ability to calibrate and perceive light. We have naturally created an extension of our ability to perceive the universe. The fact that we can calibrate and translate into a palatable form - X rays, and Gamma Rays, and Micro Waves, and all kinds of waves..is amazing to me. I guess that falls under the ambiguity of what is real or fake, but thought I would toss that out there as well. David David Rankin wrote:
Chuck,
Most of what I was addressing was these statements in your first email
"Saturated colors in astronomical images are all fake. We try to approach what the various objects might look like if they were actually bright enough to trigger the color receptors in our eyes, but all deep-sky astronomical images are really just art, when it comes right down to it. "
And again, I kindly disagree. Using your same logic, ALL colors are "Fake" but then you get into what attributes make something "real" and then a lot of ambiguity. The sensor is not trying to approach what the objects may look like, it is doing a very very good job of presenting exactly what they would look like _if our eyes were able to expose long periods of time_. Again, the camera is not creating any Fake colors, it is just able to capture more light over a longer time, and it doesn't have the problem of "night vision" it is calibrated to pick up the colors the same way our eyes do int he daylight. _IF_ our eyes were better equipped to see at night, cones staying active, we would probably see a very rich variety of colors, much like what are in the photographs. _If_ all images are just art, so is all of vision, and perception of the electromagnetic spectrum (which may be true). The neat thing about this is...calibration. It is all about calibration. If we both see an apple as red or green, we can communicate that experience to one another. For whatever reason that is, it is. The general population can move forward with commonalities that help them communicate with one another. So, I say _that within the human experience_, because our cameras are made "in the image of our eye" the images are anything but "saturated and fake" they are representations of what we would see, if our eyes were more suited to looking at the night sky. That stands true on earth looking at the orion nebula, or right in the middle of it. I am not debating the fact that all of these colors are manufactured in our head, I am saying that calling the images "fake and saturated" is more subjective than the how we assign those color values in the first place. The entire idea for the most part, behind photography, is to capture what we see, how we see it, based on the calibrates set of colors that the human brain delivers.
"The colors we see that are the result of long exposures or large apertures in no way represent the natural (read: unassisted by technology, a visual impression only) appearance of the object. They represent the different wavelengths emitted by the object, AS PERCEIVED by humans, and not due to, here we go again, a subjective, intrinsic quality of that wavelength."
Once again, "natural" color as "perceived by us". You can assign any color value you want to any wavelength, but unless we have a common "order" for those colors, it is chaos. Thanks to mother nature for giving us brains that can calibrate those colors. And again, I'm not arguing that the intrinsic value of the wavelength is any way changed by how we perceive it, or is actually anything close to how we perceive it, I'm just talking in terms of general population, and representing the reality of how we perceive color, in a photograph. If your going to narrow down "natural" to the very limited ability of the human eye, yes, that statement is true, but for me, I consider the ability of a camera to collect these photons and deliver them to us as a natural view as well. Those colors very closely represent the natural colors of the nebulae (as we would see them if we could), because the photons were emitted by that nebula, caught by the camera, and delivered to us. If the nebula was not there to emit those photons, the camera, and our eyes, could not have captured them in the first place. It is very natural.
" Just because those colors only exist in your mind doesn't diminish their importance."
Fully agree.
Anyway, I think I have actually learned quite a bit from this. I also think it has been milked out a bit. I see you talking about how the brain manufactures color, and I'm talking about how we experience it, and reproduce it. All the same stuff in the end.
Cheers,
David
Chuck Hards wrote:
I guess I do have more to say. I appreciate your comments, Joe. Very insightful.
What you described is not weird at all; people with some forms of autism sense the world around them very differently than you and I. Their brains are organized differently, exactly as you surmised. I'm not qualified to discuss exactly why, but it's probably some gentetically caused structural difference. But I digress, I just wanted to point out an example of the truth of what you hypothesized. It's real.
I do hate to keep harping on this, but it's the essense of what I've been trying to say- the sky is only "blue" as seen by humans, and probably by other earthly creatures who evolved here. That's the root of what I've been trying to convey.
We as a species, and probably as members of a larger group of species sharing part of the evolutionary tree, perceive certain colors that are associated with specific wavelengths of light. *But it is not a subjective, intrinsic quality of that wavelength- it's just the way we are constructed that allows us to see the sky as "blue". It's the way we are built that has associated the colors with those wavelengths. * ** Here's a better way to address Davids comments about the camera recording "accurate" colors: The cameras and hardware were DESIGNED to emulate human spectral response. Now think critically about that statement in the context of the sentence underlined above.
Yes, I have seen colors visually, especially in M42, through large apertures. But again, those colors are in my brain, not in the nebula. Even if you were standing right in the middle of that nebula, to the unaided eye it would appear a colorless grey. The colors we see that are the result of long exposures or large apertures in no way represent the natural (read: unassisted by technology, a visual impression only) appearance of the object. They represent the different wavelengths emitted by the object, AS PERCEIVED by humans, and not due to, here we go again, a subjective, intrinsic quality of that wavelength.
Carl Sagan said that "We are a way for the Universe to know itself". We are a part of the universe and although it would be a huge waste of space, if we were the only intelligent species in the universe, it would be enough, taken in the context of Sagan's statement. Think about it for a minute. There are life forms without a visual sense at all. But it takes a visual sense, as far as living creatures on earth are concerned, to see the stars at night and make Sagan's statement true. The evolution of vision, and the ability to distinguish wavelengths by assigning a perception of different colors to them, is a pretty remarkable thing.
Just because those colors only exist in your mind doesn't diminish their importance.
I gotta go excercise. I do 130 carbs on the elliptical daily, then I hit the weights (what color are carbs?). Have fun. _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com
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