Schemas and Information
I remember being surprised by how yellow and dingy a photo came out in one of the first rolls of film I shot when I was young. It looked nothing like how I pictured it. The tungsten light from the ceiling fan didn’t register the same in my brain as it did on the print I was holding. It was strange to me that I hadn’t ever noticed how unflattering and brutal these single bulbs had been before.
Light, along with the rest of the world, is constantly fluctuating. These changes even make objects appear different in many ways. Seeing someone lit in the glow of a tv is different than that same person basking in the mid day sun. Even if some details are hidden we don’t register the person as someone else though, despite the fact that there’s an intense visual shift in each situation. We’d never be able to function if we’d have to become reacquainted with everything that underwent a distinguishable alteration to lighting conditions, because the potential recipes of light reflection are endless.
To overcome being tricked by this visual predicament our brains process schemas. We understand the face and other objects as relationships. We see gradations as opposed to specific luminosities and colors. The luminosities and colors even follow rules in certain conditions. This is why something about someone can look off if their eyes are slightly puffy from crying or they get alterations with plastic surgery. One identical twin is distinguishable from the other, because of subtle measurements. Lighting has less of a chance to throw us for a loop if we understand an individual’s structure. The schema is what matters, because conditions are always evolving.
Schemas help us to see dimensionally (literally and metaphorically), and the more subtlety we pick up on this the more we have the capacity to understand. Just as binary code works in one’s and zeros, seeing relational differences has the ability to disclose. This is the basis of all information. The measurable difference between two states is even instantiated upon physical reality. Part of the trick, then, is to be able to pick up on the subtle contrasts just as a needle does when running along the grooves of a vinyl album. Each measurable bump is a set of frequencies that can be translated into sound. When distinctions are made, it allows for an attempt to interpret the data in meaningful ways.
It can take a lot of practice to catch any subtle distinctions though. It can be even harder to translate what they mean. When I was younger, it was only through the tool of a camera that I eventually saw the tungsten light, that I lived in every day, with certain clarity. Now I’m aware of it quite often. With these kinds of refinements in seeing we can go deeper into what is objectively happening in the world. This is not just applicable to understanding photography, but is key to knowledge itself.