Mountain Monochrome

The first image is a full-color image of the Alaskan Mountains. The second image is a duotone or black and white image of the same scene. You will have to click on the image to see both imags. To me, the first image looks "fake." Although the second image lacks the color of the first, it is the more believable image because we are used to seeing black and white images. The first image is not necessarily an accurate reproduction of what your eye might see if you were looking at the mountains, because you brain would compensate for any seemingly false colors and substitute what it expected to see. The camera cannot make those kinds of value judgments and just ends up reporting what it sees. Since the image is now not the "reality" of the actual scene, our eyes do not compensate for the differences in color and we see what the camera saw.