[Leica] An unusual visual phenomenon

[douglas.sharp at gmx.de (Douglas Sharp)]

Larry - your genetic white balance needs recalibrating;-)

Cheers
Douglas

On 28.01.2011 15:56, Lawrence Zeitlin wrote:
> 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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