Fractals

[Diego Pigozzo]

Shot today during lunch break.

[armand]

Very nice, much better than what I usually get off similar scenes.

[luxborealis]

Gorgeous in colour. I imagine it could be equally compelling in B&W.

[Tony Jay]

Grand result Diego!

You have pulled off a concept that I have tried many times with only so-so results.

A stunning combination of both the concrete and the abstract!

Tony Jay

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Me too. I've got lots of failed attempts at something like that, too.
Nicely done, Diego!

[MattBurt]

Yes it's very nice. DOF is just right. I like that it's repetition but with a random element too. Cool.

[BobDavid]

The interplay of Light/shadow/color/shapes/patterns/chaos is spot on. I think it's interesting the way the image tessellates. The green goes from dark to luminescent. Nice. Well seen.

Approximately 10% of the male population is red-green colorblind. That's a bummer.

[Rob C]

The interplay of Light/shadow/color/shapes/patterns/chaos is spot on. I think it's interesting the way the image tessellates. The green goes from dark to luminescent. Nice. Well seen.

Approximately 10% of the male population is red-green colorblind. That's a bummer.

It doesn't help them drive better...

Rob C

[francois]

Great shot that could also be an excellent candidate for B&W. I love the vidic greens, though.

[stamper]

Very nicely presented.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

As a member of BobDavid's 10% club (Red-Green "colorblind") I can see vivid green's like those in Diego's shot nicely.
As for traffic lights, I've always seen them as Red, Yellow, and White, and for years I wondered why people called the "go ahead" light "Green."

P.S. I have seen about two or three non-standard traffic lights in my 76 years in which the "Green" actually looked pale green instead of white.

[Bob_B]

Gorgeous in colour. I imagine it could be equally compelling in B&W.

I agree: those greens are rich without being overly saturated. As much as I like b/w, if this were my photo, I'd keep it as is.

[BobDavid]

As a member of BobDavid's 10% club (Red-Green "colorblind") I can see vivid green's like those in Diego's shot nicely.
As for traffic lights, I've always seen them as Red, Yellow, and White, and for years I wondered why people called the "go ahead" light "Green."

P.S. I have seen about two or three non-standard traffic lights in my 76 years in which the "Green" actually looked pale green instead of white.

 
Hi Eric, back in grad school, I spent a lot of time researching color and depth perception. As an adjunct professor, I asked students to take this test: http://xritephoto.com/color-iq-test   It helped me customized assignments for those who had difficulty differentiating colors. To what degree a person is red-green colorblind OR has tetrachromatic vision is a matter of: distribution, density, and types of cones in the retina, how visual stimuli is processed in the visual cortex, neurological pathways/wiring, and cognitive adaptability. Bottom line: I am interested in how you perceive green relative to the general and special population. Here's a weird question: do you dream in color or monochrome?

[BobDavid]

It doesn't help them drive better...

Rob C

Colorblind people are usually cognitively aware of red, green or both when it comes to driving. However, the military excludes folks who are colorblind from becoming pilots. I'd guess that also applies to commercial aviation.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

 
Hi Eric, back in grad school, I spent a lot of time researching color and depth perception. As an adjunct professor, I asked students to take this test: http://xritephoto.com/color-iq-test   It helped me customized assignments for those who had difficulty differentiating colors. To what degree a person is red-green colorblind OR has tetrachromatic vision is a matter of: distribution, density, and types of cones in the retina, how visual stimuli is processed in the visual cortex, neurological pathways/wiring, and cognitive adaptability. Bottom line: I am interested in how you perceive green relative to the general and special population. Here's a weird question: do you dream in color or monochrome?

I just took the Xrite test. I have done it before, but I can't remember what my score was. This time it 221, with perfect being 0 and pretty bad being 99. The total range of scores for my age/gender range is -1 to 1520 (I'm not sure how you score -2 if perfect is 0).

My first meaningful awareness of my color vision defect was in high school, when a friend told me that the necktie I had which I thought was blue-green was actually gray. I learned about the Ishihara color vision tests, which are the classic before-computers tests, and learned in biology class that I was a typical example of the common, genetically carried red-green anomaly. My mother's father had the same color defect, and my mother was a carrier, and I got the bad gene but my brother didn't.

Like many others with this defect I tend  to make visual distinctions by luminosity first and only secondarily by hue. I can see bright colors if they are in large areas. My wife often points out little, bright red flowers along the roadside, and I can't see the red until I get very close to them.

But yes: I often dream in color! And most of my photography is in BW, except some abstracts where the exact color doesn't need to be "real," but only "interesting."

[BobDavid]

I just took the Xrite test. I have done it before, but I can't remember what my score was. This time it 221, with perfect being 0 and pretty bad being 99. The total range of scores for my age/gender range is -1 to 1520 (I'm not sure how you score -2 if perfect is 0).

My first meaningful awareness of my color vision defect was in high school, when a friend told me that the necktie I had which I thought was blue-green was actually gray. I learned about the Ishihara color vision tests, which are the classic before-computers tests, and learned in biology class that I was a typical example of the common, genetically carried red-green anomaly. My mother's father had the same color defect, and my mother was a carrier, and I got the bad gene but my brother didn't.

Like many others with this defect I tend  to make visual distinctions by luminosity first and only secondarily by hue. I can see bright colors if they are in large areas. My wife often points out little, bright red flowers along the roadside, and I can't see the red until I get very close to them.

But yes: I often dream in color! And most of my photography is in BW, except some abstracts where the exact color doesn't need to be "real," but only "interesting."

Artists have more neurological/perceptual defects than the general population. Chuck Close has prosopagnosia, Piet Mondrian could not see green and the red paint in his pictures stayed within a narrow band throughout his career. Dyslexia, monocular vision, flicker rate, astigmatisms, and even cataracts are among a long list of variables that often impact an artist's work.

I am stereo blind--meaning I do not have binocular vision. My photographs are often spatially compressed as that is how I actually perceive three-dimensional space. To compensate for this defect, I rely on a variety of cues. For example, when I played tennis, I was a reliable back-court player. The markings on the court, the sound of the ball, and an innate number sense (trigonometry) enabled me to play. However the closer I'd get to the net, the worse I played. Luckily, my tennis buddies let me play the back court in doubles matches. My wife is skilled at racquetball. I cannot gauge where the ball is in a racquetball court--the space is relatively compact and the four walls are white. My flicker rate is too slow to see if the ball appears larger (closer) or smaller (farther) in my field of vision. Also, the sound of the ball when it makes contact with the walls echoes, so that further disorients me. I cannot bat a ball or reliably catch pop flies.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

One of my longest photographer friends, whom I met at a Minor White workshop in 1966, had vision in only one eye, yet she was adept at driving in Boston traffic (which generally demands four or more eyes in all directions). I now realize that almost all cameras, then and now, have been built for non-stereo vision.

I haven't tried making 3-dimentional prints.  At least not yet.   

[BobDavid]

One of my longest photographer friends, whom I met at a Minor White workshop in 1966, had vision in only one eye, yet she was adept at driving in Boston traffic (which generally demands four or more eyes in all directions). I now realize that almost all cameras, then and now, have been built for non-stereo vision.

I haven't tried making 3-dimentional prints.  At least not yet.   

Weirdly, I liked driving in Boston a lot more than I do in Florida. At least in Boston, everybody "gets it." Here in Florida, we get invaded by snow birds during the winter, have a lot of people on the road whose reflexes and vision aren't perky, rednecks, and super-duper long waits at traffic lights.

3-D printers are coming down in price. I think it would be fun to use CAD software for designing and printing customized lens hoods, filter holders, and other accessories. I am really interested in building motion-control devices for controlling camera movements for time exposures. I think it's really neat the way these technologies are becoming affordable for hobbyists.

[Arlen]

Wow, we have a double bonus here in this thread.

First, that's an exceptional rendition of ferns and fractals, Diego. As others have said, among the best I've seen. You seemingly got everything just right.

And then we have a very interesting discussion of color and not-so-much-color vision and perception, that really makes you think.

Eric, you noted that your vision probably influences your preference for black and white photography. It makes me wonder if the best practitioners of that genre include a higher than average number with some degree of difficulty in color perception.

[Diego Pigozzo]

Wow, I must say I'm suprised by the acceptance you all guys gave to the shot.
I'm not used to such a response

That said, both on the black&white and the color-blind subject: I tried some quick experiment with a B&W convertion (as you can see below) but I'm not as happy with the color version.

Thinking about it, IMHO the "problem with B&W" of this image is mainly the lack of an "explicit unitary structure".
What I mean is that the shot is chaotic and both color and lights/shadows help to make sense of what is shown: we know that it's a plant, so my brain adds the implied structure to my perception.

Without color, I find more difficult to make sense of all the chaos because the added implied structure is much weaker.

But this may be just me, of may be just a post-hoc rationalization due to the fact that when shot I envisioned the image to be in color (so I'm somehow biased).
Or maybe it's because I live in a world full of color images: had I lived in the forties I would have probably be much more used to monochrome image.

As for the color-blind subject, it's quite interesting how the thread evolved because I really interested in how others perceive the world.
That's why one of my favorite books is "Sensory Exotica" (that I read many many years ago).

That said, thanks again all you guys for the comments