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Can light really do this? Produce color like this? The camera says it can. This was taken after the sun went down and it was nearly dark on December 5th around 6:30pm.The magic hour is over and it is rapidly getting very dark. Dark enough that it makes you happy that the guard rails next to the edge are there. Although it looks light enough in the picture that is misleading because the sensor in the camera, that little square wafer of wisdom we photographers like to call the Wowser place, sees light differently than our eyes do. To attempt to explain the difference I spoke to our resident eye-guy, Kanye Seeme, an opticians assistant from Nigeria who is doing field work here at the Institute while he is hiding out from his government, I mean on sabbatical. In a nutshell, here is the gist of his explanation. “Well the eye you know, is in the front part of your head, entitling you to see forward and blah, blah, blah, blah, don’t bang into,  blah, blah, blah, massive rupture, blah, blah, look out, blah, can’t put back in, blah, blah, blah, so that is why we see very good.”

I don’t know about you but I for one, think we’re all good with that explanation. I believe that what we can take from all this, is, that eyes are good, seeing is good, color is good, the Grand Canyon is good, and unfortunately Nigerian optician’s assistants are bad. So then, four goods, one bad. Good trumps bad. Let’s go to the Grand Canyon then and see what all the colors about.