Now we're getting somewhere.
Possibly;sometimes, we seem to imagine colors even if they are not actually shown in an imagine.g.apples,trees or grass.Does that effect how we experience black and white images?
What is this a reference to. A previous post I imagine but which one and what is it about that post that gets us somewhere. It is clear to me that most of us if not nearly all of us have failed to see what you are driving at. The discussion is not going the way you thought or hoped it would, so at the risk of appearing to lead us, you might want to say what the real kernel of this thread is about.Now we're getting somewhere.
Perhaps -- but most of that time is spent sleeping. Time awake during darkness would be by a fire...with light giving things color and/or a warm tint. It would be meer assumption that our distant ancestors' night vision is similar to what we have now. One theory is that the discovery of fire created the possibility of brain growth in our human ansestors. Cooked food can provide significantly more energy and nurtients than the equivilent weight of uncooked food...energy we needed to feed larger brains. So it is possible our brain development ran parallel to a reduced need for night vision -- thus leading us to a higher developed color vision and reduced B&W night vision than our distant ancestors.... So, our most substantial experience seeing in black and white is, statistically, in low light.
So, are those of us who excell in B&W photography more primitive genetically?
Don Juan said to look into the shadows.Things have to get pretty dark for the loss of color to occur, examples are not difficult to find where color persists at low light levels, for example at night the dull red of fire embers can be perceived long after the bright yellow flames have gone.
I am not sure I agree that the only experience of "monochrome" in early evolutionary time would be low light vision. For example in full sun where contrast is high and extinguishes texture and detail what remains may be only simple shadows and outlines of a monochromatic nature. Marks made in daylight on certain surfaces, for example animal tracks in sand, are essentially monochromatic. Marks made with charcoal on pale surfaces are monochromatic.
Mammalian visual perception is incredibly versatile and quick. In real-time the visual fields are processed for shape, line, color, surface, volume, reflectance, object range and tracking motion compensation, etc. I like to think of this as a set of simultaneous multiple signal processing tasks that are carried out in parallel. The system seems to be highly versatile and adaptable to many different environments and different mammalian survival strategies. I recall reading reports where the presentation of a photographic portrait to a member of a primitive tribe having no prior human contact produced astonishment and bafflement, but not failure of the visual system.
It seems unlikely that encountering a black and white print for the first time would challenge the mammalian visual system into failing to register the ambient light level in which the picture is being viewed and cause it to abandon the signal processing strategy appropriate to that light level. It seems likely that a visual system with that vulnerability might have other perhaps more serious flaws and prove unviable.
A side interest in the lab is to use what we know about vision to understand some of the discoveries artists have made about how we see. The separate processing of color and form information has a parallel in artists' idea that color and luminance play very different roles in art (Livingstone, Vision and Art, Abrams Press, 2002).
Perhaps -- but most of that time is spent sleeping. Time awake during darkness would be by a fire...with light giving things color and/or a warm tint. It would be meer assumption that our distant ancestors' night vision is similar to what we have now. One theory is that the discovery of fire created the possibility of brain growth in our human ansestors. Cooked food can provide significantly more energy and nurtients than the equivilent weight of uncooked food...energy we needed to feed larger brains. So it is possible our brain development ran parallel to a reduced need for night vision -- thus leading us to a higher developed color vision and reduced B&W night vision than our distant ancestors.
So, are those of us who excell in B&W photography more primitive genetically?
This comment expressed some measure of the frequency of B&W vision and suggests the reduction of its usage.Perhaps -- but most of that time is spent sleeping. Time awake during darkness would be by a fire...with light giving things color and/or a warm tint. It would be meer assumption that our distant ancestors' night vision is similar to what we have now. One theory is that the discovery of fire created the possibility of brain growth in our human ansestors. Cooked food can provide significantly more energy and nurtients than the equivilent weight of uncooked food...energy we needed to feed larger brains. So it is possible our brain development ran parallel to a reduced need for night vision -- thus leading us to a higher developed color vision and reduced B&W night vision than our distant ancestors.
So, are those of us who excell in B&W photography more primitive genetically?
A since I did not have the book there was not much to say. The link above gave some ideas concerning peripheral vision where rods are used.Hi, I'm not getting what it is exactly, or even roughly, what you're really trying to find out. Or if you just want to have some back and forth exchanges.
At any rate, since you didn't respond to the book recommendation I made, let me say that the author is a neurobiologist. Here's an excerpt from the website:
https://neuro.hms.harvard.edu/people/faculty/margaret-livingstone
The book, written for the general public, discusses some aspects of our vision that one would likely not guess on their own. Again, no direct application to photography (that I see) but perhaps useful in gaining a further understanding.
In this case we are not imagining anything; the brain is filling in what it thinks we need. This mechanism is one of the many things that the brain does for its own comfort. Others are our tendency to "custom white balance", our tendency to bring our anticipations to viewing, the infilling of peripheral areas of vision with visual placeholders...ther are a lot of these.Possibly;sometimes, we seem to imagine colors even if they are not actually shown in an imagine.g.apples,trees or grass.
This is the brains attempt to understand in service of survival.Charicatures and seeing figures in clouds and being able to define things with just a few lines shows the brain's ability to cull info from little data.
Interesting. Vision in the peripheral areas responds to major structures, and this is demonstrated by the full-sun model you propose.Things have to get pretty dark for the loss of color to occur, examples are not difficult to find where color persists at low light levels, for example at night the dull red of fire embers can be perceived long after the bright yellow flames have gone.
I am not sure I agree that the only experience of "monochrome" in early evolutionary time would be low light vision. For example in full sun where contrast is high and extinguishes texture and detail what remains may be only simple shadows and outlines of a monochromatic nature. Marks made in daylight on certain surfaces, for example animal tracks in sand, are essentially monochromatic. Marks made with charcoal on pale surfaces are monochromatic.
Mammalian visual perception is incredibly versatile and quick. In real-time the visual fields are processed for shape, line, color, surface, volume, reflectance, object range and tracking motion compensation, etc. I like to think of this as a set of simultaneous multiple signal processing tasks that are carried out in parallel. The system seems to be highly versatile and adaptable to many different environments and different mammalian survival strategies. I recall reading reports where the presentation of a photographic portrait to a member of a primitive tribe having no prior human contact produced astonishment and bafflement, but not failure of the visual system.
It seems unlikely that encountering a black and white print for the first time would challenge the mammalian visual system into failing to register the ambient light level in which the picture is being viewed and cause it to abandon the signal processing strategy appropriate to that light level. It seems likely that a visual system with that vulnerability might have other perhaps more serious flaws and prove unviable.
So...in this case, as our vision starts to fail, the default is B&W, after that the brain must dedicate its resources to other processes and tunnel vision occurs, then there is blackout.In high-G flight maneuvers one of the ways the brain attempts to retain consciousness is to shut down cone receptors as the brain's blood supply drains. That shifts vision to black and white and tells the pilot to ease up because he's nearing total blackout.
Well some are not. My grand-daughter tells me that grass isn't grey and points out other things that are "wrong" My wife associates B&W with the kind of "made do and mend" philosophy that prevailed in the U.K. in the 50s and was still prevalent on the 60s when people took B&W because colour was not always that good and was certainly very expensive. That is no longer the case so she wonders why anyone bothers with B&W.This is an exploration around why people are so impacted by B&W.
...I also wonder what the sales of digital cameras would be like if they could only record things in B&W
I happen to think that a few scenes/ things do have more impact in B&W but this may be in compositions where the real impact of B&W is that colour adds nothing to it and in terms of impact I am in a minority of one in my social circle.
pentaxuser
Thanks for finally making that clear. That is a far more of an expanded topic than you first presented.This is an exploration around why people are so impacted by B&W.
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