[Leica] An unusual visual phenomenon

[jhnichols at lighttube.net (Jim Nichols)]

Hi Larry,

You don't say what kind of sky you had at that time.  I have seen bright 
blue sky impart a blue cast to white objects in photos.  However, your 
explanation seems plausible.

Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lawrence Zeitlin" <lrzeitlin at gmail.com>
To: "Leica LUG" <lug at leica-users.org>
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2011 8:56 AM
Subject: [Leica] An unusual visual phenomenon


> Yesterday afternoon, when shoveling our recent 15" snowfall off the
> driveway, I paused at the mailbox to get the day's mail. I set the letters
> down on the snowbank to close the box when I noticed that all the white
> envelopes appeared a pale shade of blue. When I took them in the house 
> they
> appeared normally white. While I have no definitive explanation for the
> "blue" envelopes, I have written before that the eye, mediated by the 
> brain,
> does not see reality but sees what it expects to see. We alter the visual
> scene until it conforms to our expectations. Colors are viewed in their
> "proper" hues despite ambient illumination, shapes are altered, sizes
> changed to offset their diminishment by perspective, and so on. Reality is
> in our mind, not in the objective scene.
>
> All I can suggest is that after a couple of hours of shoveling I expected
> the snow to be white despite the fact that it was yellow tinged because of
> the late afternoon sun. By shifting the color balance of the scene to meet
> my expectations, perhaps the truly white envelopes were shifted into the
> blue. Does anyone have an explanation?
>
> Larry Z
>
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