Color & Vision

By: Miles Hecker
Color photography, especially color printing has always been a challenge. Photographers as renown as Ansel Adams have felt intimidated trying to produce worthy color prints of their work. Many sought refuge and remained in the safe world of B&W through out their career. The digital darkroom has given every photographer who so desires the power to print accurate, easily reproducible color prints of their images‚ assuming of course that they possess an understanding of human color vision.
The Nature of Light
Light is the basis of all photography. Without light, we are all left in the dark. But what is light? Light it turns out is a form of electromagnetic radiation (EMR), fluctuations of electric and magnetic fields which move through space as waves move over the surface of a pond. The electromagnetic spectrum includes radio waves , infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays and gamma rays.

Scientists classify EMR by its wavelength, the distance between two cons...