Does true colour exist?

Probably the most important thing to appreciate with colour photography is that colours vary as with the light conditions. Light is affected by pollution, smoke, dust or water participles as rain, snow, clouds or haze as well as the time of day and consequently the amount of atmosphere the light has to pass through. Each of these factors, through reflection, scattering, diffusion, refraction, polarising and absorption will have an influence on the apparent colour of a scene.

As well, the trueness of the colour will depend on the colour bias of the film, and the effect of filter or lens optics. If an image is lithographically printed, then the variation in colour may be enormous because as each image is scanned, its colour is interpreted by the person operating the scanner. Then it is passed through a machine that employs chemically based colours which makes yet another interpretation of what the true colour should be. Next time you see a caption under a picture that says "natural colour" or "true colour", you can be assured that unless the subject is close up and artificially lit, then the colour will be neither true nor natural.

These images of the Byron Bay Light House were taken on the same day and aptly demonstrate how dramatically light changes can effect a photograph.