Another Way to Focus

I recently took a picture of some plants that had interesting leaves. The picture had a calm aspect, the details on the leaves looking almost fuzzy. A little later, I reprocessed it to be black and white. The result gave a different feel to the picture. With the green color removed, the unusually shaped leaves and almost spiky texture jumped out.

Here are the two versions:

Unlike the previous comparison of different perspectives, these pictures are the same perspective, the same picture. What’s different is just the color, but the result of this difference is to highlight shape and texture, things that have nothing to do with color.

What can we learn from this about seeing?

Perhaps when we look around us, we need to be aware of properties that are obscured by the complexity of what we see. By simplifying some things, like removing color, we can more easily see other details.

In this case, the effect was achieved by processing the picture afterwards, but that would be hard to do in real time. Instead, maybe we need to practice noticing things.

We could look for shapes, and try to identify them without regard for color. Or look at the textures on an object, or how it relates to its environment, or pay special attention to colors to see something better, and so on.

This is, of course, a metaphor for all kinds of seeing. For example, we can get to know people by listening to them and ignoring their appearance.

The practice of perceiving things more clearly by focus, by remove distractions, can be applied in many ways.