DES_Letter #1 — The Color of Authorship
Finding your voice through light, tone, and emotion
“What the photographer sees is science.
What the photographer feels is interpretation.”
Color is not in the world; it’s in our perception of it. A reflection of it. Color happens in the way light activates the cone cells in our eyes, translating wavelengths into sensation. What we call red, blue, or green is, in truth, the meeting point between light, matter, and emotion. In photography, that same interaction becomes expression.
In the days of film, color had character. Kodak’s Portra 400, Gold 200, Fuji’s Velvia or Provia — each film carried its specific character, its unique soul. Choosing one was like consciously selecting the tone of your voice. Even today, digital cameras from Nikon, Fuji, or Leica echo those legacies, offering colors shaped by decades of chemistry and culture. But those built-in profiles are only a beginning.
Color is where the photographer takes control. It’s no longer about the film stock inside the camera, but the intention behind every shade. Post-processing has become our modern darkroom, a place to refine what we first felt when pressing the shutter. Just as photographers once shaped prints with dodging, burning, bleaching, or toning, we now sculpt mood and meaning through our own creative workflows.
Color has always represented more than technical accuracy. It’s about harmony, balance, and rhythm — much like music. A single note has no meaning until it finds another to relate to. The same applies to photography: hue, tone, and contrast must coexist in dialogue.
Our world is built on these relationships, and photography, like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, reveals how color can change its mood, its light, its very temperature with time.
And what about black and white? It, too, is color reduced to essence. Many of us begin there, where emotion is shaped by light alone. Yet once we truly understand color, we return to black and white with deeper sensitivity. Every tone of gray becomes a color we don’t simply see — it something we feel and experience.
At DES_Photomag, we celebrate that voice: emerging, evolving, distinct. Each image in this edition of TopBest is more than a moment captured — it is a dialogue between vision and craft, instinct and intention, science and soul.
May these photographs inspire you to explore color — and black and white — not as opposites, but as notes in the same composition.
To see, to feel, to translate and to find your own color of authorship.
By Andrés Gonzalez - @deshabitua
DES_Photomag is an independent photography platform and printed publication, guided by the principles of talent over ego and curated excellence.
