We Are A Camera

Even if you don't use Photoshop you now live in a world of its metaphors.

Usually after I've taken some photographs and I'm looking at them in Photoshop I like to examine the constituent RGB channels--which are essentially a kind of lens filter. The channels can look vastly different depending on the exposure when captured: The red channel will have its unique details, the green channel will have a certain look and the blue channel will look different as well. It's a good metaphor for life: we're all looking at, and perhaps preferring different channels. But we can also combine the channels in the Channel Mixer and add Alpha Channels, which are areas of transparency that allow you to see through the channels. Obviously, this has a semiotic association with party politics, albeit a tenuous one, although green is interesting.

The red channel can be interesting because red elements are white. The balloon in this photo is a red balloon:

The green channel is typically more "smooth" and usually makes a good grayscale image in most lighting conditions. The blue channel is usually noisy, especially in low-light images.

In terms of interpreting the world, we are the camera. People who are in tribes or cults use the same camera or camera app set to see just one channel. (If they do exist, I would want a green-channel or red-channel camera, "shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.")