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Read moreSomething About... color blind or just color deficiency | Susan J Roche underwater portrait photography
One of 200 rare women in the world - this is me!
This is the number of females in the world who are colour (this is how the dictionary spells this work) blind. When my daughter was studying genetics as an undergraduate, her professor was so excited that her student’s mother had color blind - deficiency. My optometrists was thrilled to have me as a patient. He had never met any female patients who could not see all the numbers in the dotted color blind circle tests!
Maybe this sparked creativity for as child! I do see reds and greens, just the entire spectrum. This unique quality it part of who I am as an artist and helped develop my style.
It was not until I was a teen ager, that my family even knew this. Maybe it may explain so challenges in grade school, no one thought about which colors I saw. In art school & college, I pretended I was just like everyone else. Figured out ways to check pantone colors and colors wheels charts.
Interesting, I do not know if my father (who was Navy pilot) or uncle on my mothers side showed signs of color deficiency. My son has red/greencolor deficiency. I think one of brothers may also.
The 'gene' which causes (inherited, red and green types of) colour blindness is found only on the X chromosome. So, for a male to be colour blind the colour blindness 'gene' only has to appear on his X chromosome. For a female to be colour blind it must be present on both of her X chromosomes. According to Stanford Geneticist, more women who are colorblind than people know. The women who are carriers are only affected a little bit. Too little to be noticed except with very sensitive tests.
The reason for this is that these women actually have a mix of cells in their eyes. Some of these cells can sense color and others can't. Usually, enough of these cells are working that these women don't have much trouble telling red from green in their daily lives.
This maybe the reason that when color is pointed out, I can sometimes see the subtle hints that I overlooked. Or maybe, my mind just figures what I should be seeing!
Sometimes I have a confusions between colors such as the red on the left "port side" of boats and a green on the right side "starboard.” It seems that the light beam quality affects me. Green traffic signals can appear very pale green or almost white.
As a young photographer, it was a fact I was afraid to share with clients; had systems to double check retouching and printmaking. This is important as it is part of how my artistic style developed and is monochromatic. Just love the colors of at the beginning and end of the day along the water.
A few facts
Color blindness more common among men. It affects 1 in every 12 males in this country but less than 1 in every 200 females.
Facebook is blue - founder, Mark Zuckerberg, suffers from red-green color blindness.
In true color blindness facts, people are “color blind” only if they see just black and gray. This is actually very rare. The more common condition is “color vision deficiency,” where greens and reds can look confusing.
Color blindness is hereditary, and is passed from mother to son on the 23rd chromosome. However, it can also be caused by eye diseases, aging or retina damage.
A fatal railway accident in Sweden in 1875 that killed nine people was believed to be caused by a color blind rail operator who failed to properly read a signal. After the crash, a method to test color vision was developed and applied to railroad workers.
It is illegal for color blind people who live in Romania and Turkey to have a driver’s license. The laws in those countries were implemented based on fear that color blind drivers could not read traffic signals.
In World War II, color blind men were considered to have an advantage since their inability to see green helped them to see through camouflage. Today, the military will not allow people to serve if they are color blind.
Dogs, cats and rabbits see mostly gray. Monkeys have strong color vision while bees and butterflies have superior vision and can see colors humans can’t even see.
Not a lot of people, but some, suffer from a rare form of color blindness called unilateral dichromacy which means they have one normal seeing eye, and one color blind eye.
People who suffer from red green color blindness have a difficult time determining if their meat is cooked enough. Without being able to see different shades of red, it is hard to tell.
