This is my response to Egidio’s challenge, #390, “Color in Black and White.” Thanks to Egidio for a great theme and challenge. If I can be permitted, I’m changing the title of Egidio’s challenge, slightly, and I want to approach this little differently.
Egidio posits that the tonalities in a black and white image immediately suggest to us the underlying colors. I would like to explore some of the science behind this, specifically why black and white tonalities are so rich and suggestive.
Our eyes “see” through the nerve impulses generated by an assembly in the eye of rods and cones. The cones are generally responsive to colors and sharp lines. The rods respond to black and white tones. The important thing is that the rods greatly outnumber the cones (6-7 million cone cells to 120-130 million rod cells). This makes black and white vision very much more sensitive to gradations in tonality. While the process of viewing a photograph does not exactly replicate active human vision, there are similarities. Viewing a black and white photograph, we are more sensitive to all the tonalities (light and dark, textures, shadows, subtle variations in tonality). There is thus, I believe, far more information that can trigger our sense memories.
In the featured image (and to the left), we can see the rich black and white toning. This is most apparent in the patterns on the leaves. The cones ontribute to our perceptions of the flower, but even here it is the rods that are picking up the varied shadows on the petals, giving the flower an almost tactile quality.
(To be honest, a complete analysis of these phenomena would need to take into account the camera. Different cameras have different configurations of light receptors on the sensor.)
Here are more images with distinctive black and white tonalities.
Trees in an old apple orchard. The sky behind the trees suggests it’s a mostly sunny day. The trees themselves suggest it’s mid-to-late summer.
Our sense memory is full of trees like this. The sky and cloud tonalities tell us what kind of day it is. (Shot in late winter to early spring.)
This is the Abiqui River in New Mexico. It’s snow on the distant hills; we quickly see that this is winter. The variation of tonalities throughout the image contributes to its richness, especially on the river which we realize is showing the reflection of the winter sky.
This image, “Daffodils and Rocks,” contains a wealth of textures. Our sense memory immediately sees the daffodils as yellow, or lighter, with deeper yellow or orange interiors. The flowers offer a counterpoint to the rocks. The black and white tonalities and contrasts on the rocks call attention to their ruggedness.
Finally, a favorite of mine, shot in the Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge in Rhode Island. The various black and white tonalities contribute to the richness of the photograph, which I find much more interesting in black and white than the original color. The sky suggests it’s a windswept (which it is) sunny day. We believe the trees to be various shades of green. The grasses are probably a light color like a golden yellow. Just below the clouds, across the image at the lower third level, we can make out the horizon between ocean and sky.
Those are my contributions this week. Thanks to Egidio for a great challenge, and my apologies for departing slightly from it. Next week will be Tina‘s turn to issue our challenge. Click here for more information about the Lens Artists Challenge.
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