For World Photography Day, we’re turning the lens toward a question that sounds simple but opens into something much bigger: what does it mean to make images when you experience color differently?
Daniel Pecsi—who has shared work online under the pseudonym Rupert Pupkin—is a color blind photographer whose images move between portraiture, fashion, street photography and quiet observations of everyday life. His photographs are saturated with personality: sun-washed yellows, cool blue shadows, green-tinted interiors, film grain, reflections, accidents and deliberate bursts of color.
“I’ve only been a color blind photographer.”
Ask Daniel what it’s like to be a color blind photographer and his answer cuts quickly through the premise.
“I’ve only been a color blind photographer, so I have no frame of reference. I still have a great relationship with colors, and they are an important aspect of my work.”
That relationship is part instinct and part adaptation. Color blindness is not an absence of color, and no two people with color vision deficiency necessarily experience color in exactly the same way. For Daniel, the colors he sees are simply the colors of the world he has always known.
Learning how deep the color rabbit hole goes
When Daniel started taking photographs, he didn’t think much about being color blind. He photographed what was in front of him and trusted the world as he saw it. The shift came later, when he began learning the technical side of color grading.
“When I got deeper into my practice and started learning about color grading, I realized how deep the rabbit hole goes,” he says.
Color grading introduces a different kind of pressure. A photograph can feel right to the person who made it while still landing differently for someone with typical color vision—especially with details like skin tones, where small shifts can matter. Earlier in his career, Daniel often relied on a second opinion to check his edits. Today, technology gives him additional tools and reference points.
Over time, his workflow also moved increasingly toward film. That change was creatively useful. Film stocks arrive with their own established color characteristics, which gives Daniel a palette to work inside rather than a blank field to endlessly manipulate.
“As film stocks’ color palettes are a given, this workflow allows me to create more intuitively,” he says. “I leave the heavy color grading for commercial projects.”
The bus-stop ad that changed the story
Daniel discovered his color blindness long before photography became part of his life, and the moment was almost comically ordinary.
It happened at a bus stop. A washing-powder advertisement contained what looked to him like a meaningless swirl of colored dots. When Daniel asked his parents about it, they told him there was a pattern hidden inside.
That was it. He shrugged, moved on, and barely thought about it for roughly two decades.
“I shrugged it off and carried on, not thinking much of it for another 20 years. It’s funny how impactful it later became.”
Color isn’t a limitation. It’s part of the practice.
There’s a temptation to frame color blindness only through what someone cannot distinguish. Daniel’s work points somewhere more interesting. His photography is built from the color relationships available to him, shaped by experience, film, tools, trust and taste.
That doesn’t mean color blindness disappears from the process. It means it becomes one factor among many—like light, lens choice, film stock, location, timing and instinct. For World Photography Day, that feels worth celebrating: there is no single correct way to see a photograph before making one.