Rose-Colored Glasses

Philip once showed me how to use my sunglasses as an simple filter for photos. You cover the camera lens with one side of the glasses. Easy. Here's the river sky yesterday. I know you've seen it a thousand times now, but I can't resist.

The sun was filtering through the clouds, making those wonderful lines that look like the face of heaven, gazing on earth.
Looking at it, the effect was much stronger with my sunglasses on. So I tried them as a camera filter.

The photos seem equally impressive to me. But sometimes the sunglass filter will allow the camera to capture variations in light/dark that my naked eye can't see, and the camera alone can't capture.
Why is that?
A piece of plastic in my hand cannot alter the heavens. The wonders of light and dark, cloud and shadow, piercing sun -- they exist entirely independent of my eye. The sunglass filter merely reveals to me something that's already there, but my naked eye is blind to ... I suppose. Adam would probably tell me the science behind it all, and prove me wrong!
Still, I can't help thinking that our cynical attitude toward "rose-colored glasses," both literal and figurative, is misplaced. What if it's our own vision that's flawed, and rose-colored glasses are corrective?
How can we trust our own view of the world? What if rose-colored glasses are just what we need?