Seeing The Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival In True Color

By Guest Author: Jarrod Lyman

“Wait, you’re colorblind and you do photography?”

It’s a statement of incredulity I’ve had directed at me more times than I can count, most recently when I was at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival.

I was talking with a friend about my EnChroma glasses and their magical effect on me at the tulip fields when another person paused to ask me that all-too-familiar-question. I don’t mind, though. Truth be told, I love talking about what it’s been like since I got these glasses. It’s not an exaggeration when I say, it’s been life changing.

Being colorblind doesn’t affect every part of life, but people are often surprised when they find out how much it does. Like checking with my wife before heading to work each day to make sure my outfit matches. It’s quite humbling to find out that the gray pair of pants you’ve worn several times over the course of a few months were actually green.

The first time I experienced what EnChroma can do was at the viewing telescope Mt. Hood Territory installed at Jonsrud Viewpoint in Sandy. I was there attempting to photograph a sunrise that seemed fairly underwhelming. I looked through the telescope and was shocked to see far more color than I was aware of. “This is what you all see!?” I remember exclaiming.

I was fairly obsessed at that point, so I was ecstatic when a friend of mine at Mt. Hood Territory asked if I’d be willing to try a pair of EnChroma glasses at the Swan Island Dahlia Festival. My response was only two words, one describing a very warm place and “yeah.” The experience was amazing, as there were so many more colors than I ever knew. And so many flowers that I thought were white that, turns out, weren’t. Needless to say, it was an emotional experience.

EnChroma glasses unveiled the full beauty of this sunrise over the tulips.

I was already eagerly anticipating what the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival would be like with my glasses, so it was a no-brainer when Mt. Hood Territory asked me to share my experience there as well. Once again, I was awestruck. The colors were incredible. I’m red-green colorblind, and the glasses really magnify the difference between those two colors for me. The red tulips were unbelievably vivid. The yellows just sang. The purples, which I always thought were fairly faint, turned out to be some of the most radiant colors of all. I was there early in the season, so there are even more that haven’t bloomed yet that I can’t wait to see.

And it’s more than the flowers. The hot air balloons that take off on calm mornings were even more magnificent than I knew. The envelopes are designed with a wide array of colors which, turns out, were just as vibrant as the flowers below. I had a lot of fun capturing different shots of the balloons over the flowers, as the glasses gave me the ability to see new possibilities that I hadn’t before.

I urge anyone who is colorblind to visit the festival and try the glasses. It’s hard to imagine what you’re missing when you don’t have the experience to compare. But it’s something that will stick with you, and give you new appreciation for the world around you.

The hot air balloons are a masterpiece of color in their own right.