It has been more years than I care to remember now, that I began my obsession with photography.  Early on I grew to love color slide film and as a result most of my color work was with reversal film.  In those days the standard was Kodachrome 25.  It had a reputation for being able to reproduce very accurate color, and was very archival.  I learned early on to expose for the highlights and let the shadows fall where they wanted to.  It had a downside and that was its lack of speed.  A tripod was almost always nearby and ready for use.  If I needed more speed than K25 could give me there was Ektachrome, an E6 process film that came in faster speeds.  Ektachrome had a different color pallet than Kodachrome, but was very attractive.  Then one year Fuji film came out with an E6 process reversal film called Velvia.  I as well as my other photographic friends loved the look.  The color would pop out at you.  Wonderful color that you wanted to look at and admire.  The colors were beautiful, however they were not accurate.  Looking at a side by side comparison of a Kodachrome 25 slide, and a Velvia slide was illuminating.  The K25 slide reproduced life like color that was accurate if properly exposed.  Velvia reproduced colors that were not what my eyes saw, but they were how I wanted to see my subject.  The emotional reaction to the Velvia pallet was what I wanted

As we journey through our day, those of us who are sighted accept that what we are looking at with our eyes is the real world.  We all agree that leaves on trees are green, and the sky is blue.  The colors of our individual world make sense to our brain.  When we talk to someone about a color we can agree for instance that a Fire truck is red.  Science has another opinion.  Each of us sees color in our own unique way.  The biology of our eyes is not identical from person to person.  Added to that, is the fact that our own brain processes the signal that comes from the photoreceptor cells in our eyes, through our optic nerve, and gets filtered by our brain.  Its then that we attach emotional meaning to the colors we are seeing.  Anthropologist study humans, their origins, physical characteristics, institutions, religious beliefs, and social relationships.  There is a growing opinion that our emotional reaction to color is imprinted on us.  Our survival depended upon us having the proper emotional reaction to colors that exist in nature.  Hunger drove early humans to quickly see the color of the animals they were hunting.  We perceive blue as the color of water, that has a positive emotion attached to it.  We are alerted by the color red, that color is the color of blood.  We've developed a strong emotional response to red.  Science now suggests that we are not seeing the exact same shade of color as those around us.  As a point of clarity I am not talking about color blindness in this instance.  People whose eyes are working normally and have no difficulty with color in their daily routine have their own unique color pallet.  Most of the time we are not even aware of the differences.  We refer to colors by the same name, and agree on their identity.  Our own experience in life adds to the way we react to color.  This is our own learned response.  It is very common for people to dislike a color intensely because of a negative emotion being attached to it.  Our brain seeks to attach meaning to what our senses are sending it.  The first step for me in creating a photograph is to really look at what my eyes are seeing, and listen to my emotional response to what I am looking at.  Once I identify an emotional response its time to start thinking about technique and how to get what I want inside a frame.  These days I no longer think in terms of film.  Its all digital capture now.  I have a workflow that gives me all the creative tools I can imagine, and adjustments that allow me to get just the look I want.  The next time you have a small block of quiet time available, take a look at my work and allow yourself to see what you are looking at.