Why do you see Milky Way and night photos with light painting that have vivid color? They’re fake, right? In a word, no. Let’s see why!
The color of the Milky Way
Most people in the world cannot see the Milky Way at night. Indeed, when large urban areas have experienced widespread power outages, residents have called 911 to express alarm about these “strange clouds hovering overhead.” There was nothing strange about the Milky Way. They were simply seeing it for the first time.
When we can see the Milky Way, it mostly looks white to us. It turns out that “Milky Way” is a good name! In China, it’s called “Silver River,” another great name.
But it turns out that the Milky Way does have other colors than white. There are parts that are more yellow or red, or even blue. Why can’t we see these?
The color of nature
When you are out in the darkness of nature, what color do the mountains and the trees look to you? Probably black and white, with some shades of gray unless the moon is extraordinarily bright. And even then, the colors are not very prevalent.
Those colors are still there. But why can’t we see them?
Exposing the color of a subject through light painting
Some night photographers add light using a handheld light during the exposure. This is a technique called light painting. Think of it like someone using a flash to help brighten a subject. The only difference is that a night photo likely has a longer exposure time, allowing someone to use an LED flashlight and illuminate a subject for much longer than a flash, sometimes as long as several minutes!
This can expose the color of the subject when using a white light.
Adding color at night through light painting
We can even light paint using colored light. I sometimes add color to the scene using a handheld ProtoMachines LED2 light painting device capable of creating any color in the RGB spectrum and offering controls for brightness and saturation. I usually walk around and light the foreground from multiple angles. All the lighting is done in-camera at the time of exposure.
Why can’t we see colors at night?
As we have discovered, many night images are colorful. Some who are not familiar with night photography might regard this as odd since this isn’t the way night typically appears to our eyes.
As night grows darker, our eyes become increasingly monochromatic. Our pupils widen to let in more light. But while our cones function well in brighter light and see color, our rods are monochromatic. However, our camera does not have the same limitations as our eyes, registering colors in low light far more vividly.
To put it simply, our lowlight vision is not sensitive to color. The darker it gets, the less color we see.
However, our cameras are more sensitive to light. They have no such limitation, especially during a long exposure photo.
The magic of photography
Photography freezes a moment in time…even if that moment is actually several seconds or even several minutes or hours in time.
And these fantastic images expose colors to us. Those colors are really there. Just because we don’t have the sensitivity to see them doesn’t mean they are not there.
Photographic images often do not depict the world as we experience it. After all, photos freeze water droplets from waterfalls in midair. They allow us to see the day as black and white. They allow us to use a flash to illuminate what needs more light.
And they allow us to see colors that our eyes cannot see at night.
How many other types of images can you think of that depict the world differently from how we experience it?
Interested in photographing the Milky Way?
If so, check out this great Milky Way photography gear guide!
I was familiar with the fish-eye lens that depicts scenes differently but I learned about using a quasi-tilt-shift blur effect from your book.
Oh great, thanks! There’s a lot of information about photography in the book along with the history and stories (and of course, photos).
I think it’s our pupils that widen in the dark, not our retinas. I believe our retinas stay the same size.
You are correct. I have “retina” on the brain because I recently had surgery for a detached retina. I’ll have to correct that. Thank you for pointing that out!