Darkrooms ain't dead

Time was when photographers spent a significant amount of their time in darkrooms, working in the gloom, bent over trays of foul-smelling chemicals, developing and printing their photographs.

Now, with digital cameras, those days are gone ... or are they?

Look at the image above.

The pink and the orange stripes on both sides are the same two colours. Yes?

Of course.

But what about the other stripes? Left and right, are they the same colour?

Scroll down for the answer ...

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Yes. They're the same colour.

If you don't believe me, here's the same image with the pinks and oranges removed:

So, what's that astonishing illusion got to do with darkrooms?

It shows how your eye can be completely fooled. If you're at home of an evening, editing your day's photographs with the room light on, and you make some colour tweaks - a bit of enhancement, boosting the saturation a little, whatever - you're in danger of getting things wrong.

It doesn't matter if it's broad daylight outside, when you edit your photographs, do it in subdued light, or even darkness. To the puzzlement of family and neighbours, I work on my images with the blinds drawn.

It's ironic, isn't it? Photographers work with light. But a good half of the time they need to work in the dark - even in these digital days.