Monday, April 15, 2013

Flowers all the same colour


There are two kinds of photoreceptor in the eye: cones that are sensitive to colour, but are not triggered by low levels of illumination, and rods which are more sensitive to low levels of light but do not process colour. This is what accounts for the black-and-white feel of scenes at night, and the greys before the dawn.

Chekhov, in his story 'The House with the Mezzanine', has one of his characters obseve this: "Луна уже стояла высоко над домом я освещала спящий сад, дорожки; георгины и розы в цветнике перед домом были отчетливо видны и казались все одного цвета." (The moon stood high now over the house and illuminated the sleeping garden, the paths. Dahlias and roses in the flowerbeds in front of the house were clearly visible and all of them seemed the same colour).

The mechanisms of lens and camera will deliver a different picture of the world, unless great care is taken with filters or processing. The opening scene of Tarkovsky's Nostalghia (see picture above) conveys almost miraculously the sense of the landscape before dawn, the colour levels are so low that the eye struggles to make out whether there is any colour or not.