Page 52 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 3 #1

52 THE MERLOT EFFECT

“How can that be?” I insisted. “It doesn’t work by any means, but these images marked
make any sense. The lower the ISO, the less a turning point. I began to experiment in a
sensitive to light the camera is. Isn’t the object new and different way, one that would lead to
to make the camera more sensitive to light?” rethinking everything I thought I knew about
“I’m telling you,” JD repeated. (It was often light and the world around me.
that way in those days. It took a while for me to “What’s that?” I said to the doctor who had
understand that when it comes to doing tech- just examined my eyes. I was seven. I had been
nical research, few people can keep up with given a routine eye test at school and it was
JD. So when JD says “I’m telling you,” I’ve determined that I was virtually blind in my
learned that I need to listen. Closely. Carefully. right eye. The doctor had just done a test that
Attentively.) mapped the nerves that connect the eye to the
brain. His first concern was that there was a
ut of desperation, I tumor or some equally bad thing keeping me
decided to try this. Setting the ISO from seeing. When he showed me the results
Oin the 100 to 200 range worked in- of the test, I pointed to what appeared to be
credibly well outside. Well, mostly. So, I knew a hole in the front of each eye. That hole, he
JD was on to something. But in the burned- told me, was the blind spot every human has in
out house, well, it only made things worse. Ex- front of his or her eyes. There are two reasons,
posures were now terribly long. I tried every- he said, why we are not aware of it.
thing. I dropped my aperture, but the best I
could do at the time was F4. Not good. We he first has to do with
bought faster lenses, and though they helped, the way that our eyes work. There is
in the end they didn’t fix the problem. I simply T enough overlap from one eye to the
could not stop the burned-out areas from oc- other so that where we are blind in one eye,
curring. there is enough information from the other
Then I noticed something. Looking at an eye to fill in the blanks.
underexposed image, I noted that the prob- The second reason is that the human brain
lem was still there, but it wasn’t as bad. One interpolates what we see. Or, as he put it that
afternoon, after a terribly painful shoot with a day, it “fills in the blank spots” with informa-
model who was too stoned to stand still, I sat tion that we have gathered from experience or
on the porch of the burned-out house com- from what we have been taught we ought to see
pletely frustrated. “If I know,” I remember when we look at the world. Meaning, we see
thinking, “that the more insensitive to light what we have seen before and we see what we
the camera is the better the color, contrast, have been told we will see. A recent Nova pro-
and detail, then what does that tell me about gram went so far as to say that we actually do
how the camera 'sees' the world?" not see in 3D. That our brain interpolates two
This was a far more important question than two-dimensional images in a way that simu-
I realized at the time. In fact, in retrospect, it lates seeing three dimensions. I didn’t know
is one of the most important questions I have this in 2005, but once I remembered that day
ever asked myself. A few days later, I went back with the eye doctor, I knew I had to learn to see
to the burned-out house and created the series the world differently. Not the way I thought I
called The Urn and the Flower. Not my best did, but the way the camera saw the world.

nyghtvision magazine volume 3, number 1, WINTER 2013