Everyone hits a dry spell every now and then and to  be honest I am in one now. It’s not that I am not taking pictures, but more that I don’t have an overarching idea for taking photos. I like to shoot with a series in mind to guide me and right now I don’t. At least not one that I am excited about. But as Bhuddists say, “Change is inevitable.” For now I am just waiting for the inevitable.

Every time  I am in a rut I tend to peruse my photobook collection. My favorite of course is looking at the work of Japanese master photographer Daido Moriyama. His black and white work is just phenomenal. I have heard him say that “black and white is more abstract: reminscent of symbols in a dream.” There is another photographer’s quote (sorry I forgot the photographer’s name) that is something about when you photograph someone in black and white you photograph his soul.

Hmm… why is black and white photography considered more elemental, more penetrating than color? I wonder if the physiology of human vision has anything to do with it? After all humans have 2 types of photoreceptors, rods and cones. Rods mainly sense the light energy being emitted by objects regardless of the light’s wavelength. Cones are utilized in color perception. There are 3 different types of cones in our eyes sensitive to the long wavelengths in the red area of the spectrum, medium wavelengths in the green area of the spectrum and short wavelengths in the blue area of the spectrum. In order to see colors that are in between, say yellow which is in between green and red in the spectrum, the red and green cones in our eyes send a signal to our brain which interprets it as the color yellow. In this way different amounts of stimuli to the 3 cone receptors can produce any color in the spectrum. Sound familiar? It’s the basis for the RGB color systems used in monitors and cameras and other digital imaging applications.

Scientists studying color perception tend to agree that:

Color vision is an illusion created by the interactions of billions of neurons in our brain. There is no color in the external world; it is created by neural programs and projected onto the outer world we see.

In other words, color isn’t real. Color is something that takes place only in our minds and  is then overlaid on the world. Matrix, anyone? Black and white vision is just a sensing of the light energy that is being reflected from the object, which is a better, or should I say – more elemental, reflection of reality.