Perception – What’s Yours?

Perception – What’s Yours?

Okay… I agree – not a great composite. But I was just trying to start us off on the perception topic with some fun.

I’ve been thinking a lot about point of view and “perception” lately. My thoughts started earlier last year when I moved from my old space to a newer happy, clean, bright space closer to city and activities. I instantly perceived life differently. The world and places looked “better” I saw buildings as beautiful that I never noticed before even though I drove by the many times before. I felt like everything was more alive.

Was it really different… or was it my perception?  All I know is that my life view changed and gave me the motivation that I need to get out of a rut. 

That takes me to our sight … the perceptive colors and tones we see through our eyes. What about corrective eye surgery? After personally going through this eye surgery process, it made me wonder about how this could change the color balance in what we see from warm tones to cooler tones – and from diffused light to clear images. 

After surgery on the first eye, I immediately noticed a difference. The “new” eye was not only brighter, but in photography terms, the color balance was “cooler” just like I had adjusted the color balance on my editing screen.  I kept moving my hand between the “Old” vs “New” eye to compare the warm vs cooler tint. Which color did I prefer? 

Eventually both eyes were corrected. Would this mean I would be editing differently? Were my current prints more blue or magenta due to me adjusting for my past “old” eyes? Will that affect image processing, or what images are preferred? What determines how I take images in the field, how I edit,  my point of view? What determines how other people perceive my images and prints. Others are all coming with different set of eyes and different personal perceptions. 

Then …. I recall what a friend told me –  that Monet created his famous “Water Lillies” series with very poor vision.

Then I really went down a rabbit hole… how do others perceive colors? What are their computers like? What hues, tones, colors, etc do they perceive? My epiphany moment was … We all perceive differently and everyone has their own set of eyes and their own preferences. So in reality, it really is out of our control. All we can do is to create images how we like and what feels best for us. What our viewer enjoys is up to their perception. Meanwhile, I’ll create based on my perception and how I feel… like it, or not.