Vision - Color Blindness and Color Perception

Yesterday I posted about color and that led to some interesting discussions and wonderful feedback. It also got me thinking about senses and perception. Vision is different between species. Most people already know that dogs perceive color differently than humans do, and also that some people have color blindness.

Can you see the numbers/letters in each square?

Protanamoly, also called "red weakness" is present in 1 of 100 males which is a huge number. In protanamoly, red, orange, yellow and yellow-green shift towards the the green hue and get pale. When looking at violet, a person with protanomoly will see blue.

The red tones of the grapes on the left are reduced or eliminated
in protanamoly, leaving the grapes looking blue.

A second type of color blindness is termed deuteranamoly or "green weakness". This is present in 5 out of 100 males, much more prevalent than protanomoly. Again, the small differences between red, orange, yellow and green blend but in the deuteranomoly individual although the colors blend to the green hue, they don't get pale but instead, they retain their brightness.

What a difference!  The changes between panels two and three are
not just color but also hue/intensity. The colorful world is a
world of shades of grey for a large proportion of the male population.

The majority of people with protanomoly or deuteranamoly will go through life without any difficulty and sometimes without even realizing that they are "color blind". But men who suffer from dichromasy are seriously affected and it affects their daily life in all aspects. There are two types of dichromasy - protanopia and deuteranopia.

Protanopia sees the color wheel like this.

Protanopia reduces the brightness of red, orange and yellow so much that they pull into the greys and blacks and reds become almost invisible. Coping mechanisms can be developed, but the lack of color differentiation will impact daily life.

Deuteranopia blends colors on the wheel into larger
groupings but keeps the brightness of the reds,
oranges and yellows. 

Deuteranopia keeps the brightness but again, eliminates the differences between red, orange, yellow and green. The colors have names, but look exactly the same to a person affected by deuteranopia. I suspect it would be rather like looking through a patterned shower door trying to discover the occluded figure below.

By Silent Reaper

Finally there is synthesia, but I love the aspects of synthesia so I'll tackle this in a separate post at another time.

I see examples of color and people's ability to discern color every day in my shop. My business is color - blending and contrast, complementary and shaded. I love color and my customers do too. But it's not unusual for customers to choose a dark blue for a purple, demonstrating the inability to see the red in the purple beads. It is said that Van Gogh saw more than 15 different shades of yellow. I never found that surprising because I have fine color sense, but after studying color perception in more detail, I now understand why that is considered so remarkable.

Here's a quick comparison of what people with red-green color blindness
actually see when confronted with a color test. The standard vision
disks are on the left. Can you see all the embedded numerals?

Are you interested in testing yourself or others for colorblindness and color perception? Here's a great link for you with several different tests that you can administer yourself.

Color - I Love Color

Color is everywhere in my life and my art. My store's foundation is a love of color - bead workers are not only focusing on the type of stitch or project, but what color(s) to use that will make their project unique and a perfect statement of their sense of style. So today I'm going to celebrate one of my favorite things with you - color!

The full spectrum of visible color is so beautiful as it progresses
from the warm to the cool colors. I adore color!

So join me on my walk through color...

What a wonderful building. Red barns are iconic in the U.S. Why
red? Because the red paint was less expensive than other colors. 

RED - hot, spicy, just to touch it can burn. Red is often the color of love and is thought of as intense.

The orange colors of sunset are breathtaking and stunning. How often
have you stopped what you were doing just to gaze at the western
skies when they looked like this?

ORANGE - Orange is friendly but approach with caution. Orange is happy and when hiding in green leaves, a promise of tasty fruit above. Many fruits are orange when ripe.

I really like this room. It makes me want to explore and have
a comfortable place to read in the overhead room. 

YELLOW - An intense heat - the promise of red brought to fruition is yellow. Be cautious with yellow, it can take over a scene so that all you notice is this one color.

The aurora borealis lights, also known as the Northern lights, usually
appear as bands of green light across the night sky. Magical!

GREEN - Relief from the hot colors above comes in the coolness of green. Green equals life to me - the leaves of plants and trees and the cool grasses.

The deep parts of ice often have a blue coloring. I love looking at the
various colors of large icebergs and Antarctic ice. So pretty. If I could
only be warm while viewing them...

BLUE - Blue is refreshing and cool, the color of deep waters and icebergs. Blue is also the color of sky so it is often associated with freedom and flight.

A poem in the US speaks of "Purple Mountain Majesties" and this
lovely picture in indigo tones shows this so beautifully. 

INDIGO - Indigo is the color often forgotten in the spectrum because it is overshadowed by the blue that preceeds it and the violet that follows it. But indigo gives us depth of shade and shadow and is reflected in the sky at certain times during the darkling hours when the indigo skies stop breath with their beauty.

I love this concert hall. I'm not sure where it is - I found the pic on
an architectural website as I was reviewing color in architecture, but
the colors and lights just make for a wonderful venue. 

VIOLET - The purple of violet is the red aspect of the purple spectrum where indigo is the blue aspect. It is a color dearly loved and very rare. The color of royalty, the dye was difficult to make and very time consuming, resulting in violet fabrics being reserved for the very rich or royal only. No wonder it is one of the most popular colors.

I really love the paint on this house. What a great
artistic statement!

So which is your favorite color? And while you are thinking about that, don't forget the far ends of the spectrum, white and black. Although white and black are considered neutrals, when working in graphic arts it is apparent how very important the values can be, and values are imparted by the absence or presence of white and black.

The visible spectrum is only a small part of light, but it's the most important
to us in our daily lives. Be safe today and stop at the red lights, go on the
green ones, and celebrate color.

Choose a color for your day...

I Feel Like Dancing

I feel like dancing. I have an older body - overweight and prone to broken bones, my muscles are tired, and my mind is more prone to defy gravity than I am in real life. Nonetheless, I feel like dancing despite all of this.

I feel like dancing - well...why not? Joy can be expressed in so many
ways and dancing is one of them. 

It's fall, my favorite season, and the leaves are turning into shades of red, orange and gold that are combining to make my favorite color combinations.

May I have this dance?

I have my new printer installed and even though there are still quirks I need to work out, it seems like it will work very well for me and it's fast, fast, fast!

Ballet comes in many varieties, not just classical any more. I love
the strength of this dancer's feet, even though mine would be screaming
in pain if I tried anything like this. 

I had a fabulously fun time sharing lunch with drummerwench yesterday with great food and conversation that passed by all too soon.

Love this series of the body in motion. 

I got all of my errands completed and had a fabulous phone conversation with Aearwen. My fruit and vegetables got washed and prepped, my chicken breasts got baked, and even the laundry got done despite my altered Wednesday schedule. I admit that the last load didn't get out of the dryer until shortly after 8:00 p.m., but that's OK. It all got cleaned, so I'm happy.

Of course dance isn't solely a women's activity. I've always loved
watching the men - they can be stunning and amazing and they defy gravity. 

I got chocolate! Drummerwench was kind enough to gift me with two amazing San Francisco chocolates. There is "Pure Notes Dark Chocolate" by TCHO - very dark and rich, not overly sweet, very nice! Also, there is Recchiuti's "Dark Milk" Chocolate that I think has become my new favorite. It has just a touch of milk to give smoothness and is slightly sweeter than the TCHO. It's totally AMAZING!

Is life a leap of faith? 

So, all of these good things - yup, I'll be dancing through the falling leaves today!

Want to dance with me? Let's defy gravity and fly...

Care to join me?

Intersecting Cyber Life and RL Friends

Today is my day off and my usual list of errands is lengthy. But I don't care about any of the things on my list because I am meeting an on-line friend for lunch. I am so happy!

Meeting friends can be so satisfying.

It's always something special to be able to meet a fellow writer, someone who shares the love of Tolkien fan-fiction with me, and someone whose stories I have read and enjoyed. Over the years I have met many on-line friends in real life and almost universally those meetings have been amazing, awesome, and fabulous. So when I extend invitations to those of you coming to Minnesota to get in touch with me, I mean it sincerely! I want to be able to meet you and spend some time with you.

Friends are the best thing ever!

Today Drummerwench is in town for a family event this weekend and she was kind enough to message me and find out if we could get together. So, at 11:00 am today, we'll be meeting for a nice lunch at a little bistro. Then she wants to see the shop, so I'll either drive her over there or she can follow me (since she managed to get a car for the day) and I'll show her that. I am bouncy at this wonderful opportunity to share some time with her. Silly? Maybe. Or maybe being as excited as a six-year-old when she's going to a special event is one of the ways that I keep telling this aging body that it is really young, it's just the brain that's old :-)

The most unlikely friends can be among the best!

So even though my list of things I have to do today won't get any smaller, I'm still going to happily set some time in my day aside for one special event that I'll remember for a long time to come. And even if I end up doing a load or two of laundry late tonight, it is SO worth it!

Friends shelter and support each other, no matter how different they are. 

Yippee!!!!

Dizzy and the Tree & Flower Awards

Dizzy - it's a term that gets used fairly often. When someone is acting dizzy they are flitting here and there, never really landing or concentrating on one thing or another. Turning around and around to become dizzy so that I could fall backward and watch the world revolve around me used to be one of the favorite things I did when I was a child. For that matter, maybe I should do it again one of these days  - it was super fun. But getting dizzy when you're in your daily routine, walking from one place to another, leaning over to pick something up or climbing up a ladder to get something while dizzy - those are not good things. My DH has been fighting through dizziness for the past few days, and this is the third or fourth time this year. I'm starting to get quite concerned about this and so is he. If this goes on much longer I'll need to make a doctor's appointment for him.

Some people will feel dizzy just looking at this graphic.

But I have the Minnesota Bead Shop Hop coming up from October 1-13th and Chickie will be on vacation and out of town for much of that time so I'll be short staffed. That means that doctor appointments will have to wait and we're just going to have to hope that things settle down soon. I'm worried nonetheless. So many of my f-list and blog readers are in medicine. Any ideas? I'm sure it has to do with the inner ear, but he did have his ears looked at and they seemed fine. It could be sinuses or maybe the turn of the seasons, but I just don't know. Argh...I hate feeling inept, but health issues are NOT my forte.

I'm still torn about my involvement in the Bead Shop Hop, but I'm
committed now. If I survive the experience with one employee short, it
will be a Frackin' Miracle!

Finally, but far from least, Congratulations to all of the winners in this year's Tree and Flower fiction Awards (see the full list of all winners here.). I have to thank those who were kind enough to nominate and vote for my stories, I was amazed by such an outpouring of support. Due to your kindness and your votes, I won for the following stories (I have embedded links for each in case you're interested in reading any of them).  So...I thank everyone for the following story awards...

1st Place - Favorite Characterization of a Dwarf of Thorin's Company - Culture Clash 

1st Place (Tie) - Favorite Art, Photomanip - Rain Over Lake Evendim

2nd Place - Favorite Story Set During The Hobbit - The Precision of Tea

2nd Place - Favorite AU Story - The Last King

2nd Place - Favorite Characterization of Sam - The Journey to Rivendell

3rd Place - Favorite Vignette - Lessons of Birds

3rd Place - Favorite Story Set in the Silmarillion - Gems of Light

3rd Place - Favorite Story Set During LotR - A Candle For a Brother

3rd Place (Tie) - Favorite Characterization of Gimli - Burdens Shared

Honorable Mention (Tie) - Favorite Drabble or Drabble Series - Breaking the Mold

Honorable Mention (Tie) - Favorite Vignette - Survival of the Fittest

Happy Tuesday to everyone and Happy Birthday, Alikat7.

What a Nice Weekend

OK, to be absolutely truthful, my weekend is from 5:00 p.m. on Saturday until Monday morning - so not really a full two days. But it was wonderful, nonetheless. Why? Read on...

I'm dancing for joy lately. I know that won't last, but it's
a great thing right now. 

Saturday at 4:00 p.m. was the second pick-up day at my Father-by-Marriage's house for items that had been sold on the on-line auction. Everything except the pool table and one person from out of town's items had been picked up by the time I dropped by to see DH there after I shut down the store Saturday night. I went through the house with him. The rooms are mostly empty. We still have clean-up to do, and there is trash to throw out, but there is no other way that we could have gotten so much out of the house so quickly. Even though I would have changed some things if I was doing this again, it was a good experience. We waited until my nephew arrived with a new toilet that he was installing in the downstairs bathroom, then left to grab some dinner and call it a night.

The easiest way? Have a relative do it for you! Yes, of course
we paid him - he is a trained plumber. But we didn't have
to try and do the darned thing ourselves. Yippee!

Sunday we woke, dressed and went to Renaissance Festival for the day. The weather was perfect. It was cold in the morning - mid 50's when we arrived. But the skies were blue - not a cloud in sight - and by the afternoon the temps were in the mid 70's and the fest was crowded with patrons. Next weekend is the final weekend of this year's Fest, so we'll be there rain or shine to wrap the season up. Another plus - the final two weeks of the season they run a special price on next year's season tickets, so we purchased next season's admissions yesterday and saved a bundle. Basically, during our fourth visit we start attending for free and since the season is seven weekends long, we go for free for half of the weekends. It's a great deal and we always grab it.

Twig the Fairy was in fine form at Fest yesterday. She started at the
Minnesota Renaissance Festival many years ago and is still'
one of our top street performers.

We had a nice, light dinner and DH grumped about how horribly his football team is playing this year (they were really pathetic in yesterday's loss). My team plays tonight, but I have high hopes for them. Go Broncos!

DH's Minnesota Vikings played horribly on Sunday. Hopefully my
own beloved Denver Broncos can do better tonight on Monday Night Football.

An on-line writing friend is coming to town for a wedding at the end of the week and we're trying to work out a RL meeting for Wednesday. I'll know more a bit later today or tomorrow, but it would be a wonderful thing. I always love to meet my on-line friends and acquaintances in RL when I can. Some of my best friends started out as text exchanges between keyboards and I cherish each one!

Meeting new friends is always such fun!

The final items from the on-line auction are being picked up this afternoon and at 6:15 pm tonight, and then we'll be done with this segment and ready to get the house on the market. We're running about a week later then I wanted on my mental schedule, but that's not too bad considering all we were trying to get accomplished. Fall is looking like it's going to be a great season!

And finally, an author I follow on-line made a custom cell-phone skin featuring one of her books and had the link. I decided that since it was very inexpensive, I could afford to change skins for the season, so I downloaded an autumnal pic and it's getting printed and shipped to me as we speak. If you're interested in making one for yourself, check them out at cellphoneshop.net .

I decided on a detailed look at that solitary autumnal tree that I used
in my celebration of fall post last week. It will be a wonderful
seasonal cellphone sink for my phone. 

Have a great Monday!