How useful are photos?

[Tim Allwood]

I can't help noticing that the colour rendition of photographs seems to be getting more and more variable, especially with the advent of digiscoping. The empahisis put on photos in id articles is quite surprising given their variability, with colour tones stated in captions plainly not visible on the pix. Just surf around for a few examples. while not a problem in itself it does give a distorted picture of reality that artwork doesn't. Just have a look at the pix of Hume's Warbler and especially Pallas's Warbler on Surfbirds rarity gallery http://www.surfbirds.com/cgi-bin/gallery/display.cgi?gallery=gallery9
How much can we rely on a pic to portray 'true' colour? Is there still a place for notebooks, sketches and artwork? :h?:

sorry this is in wrong forum - still getting to grips with stuffo:D

[Adey Baker]

Of course, not all artwork is always reproduced faithfully in books, etc., so we probably still need a combination of art, notes and photos to get the full picture.

Considering all the variables in the digital photo process - the camera's white balance, colour profiles in software, both the photographer's and the viewer's monitor settings, etc., it's amazing just how close many shots are to real life!

Luckily, when the colour is wrong sometimes, it can be quite obviously wrong so we can allow a bit of 'artistic license' in those cases.