What Is Scotopic Vision

Over the past few years there has been great interest in my Scotopic Vision series which is now available on-line. The number one question I always get is, "What is scotopic vision?"

I started working on these images in 2006 after noticing a phenomena that occurs during the twilight hours. I usually go for a walk in the evenings and one evening I noticed that my vision seemed to be in black and white. Once I became aware of this I started to notice it more often which lead to Google one night in an attempt to figure out what was happening. Once I learned that vision shifting from color to monochromatic was a normal physiological event I felt much better. For a while I thought, heaven forbid, that I might be going blind or have some sort of vision problem.

According to Wikipedia, scotopic vision is "the monochromatic vision of the eye in low light. Since cone cells are nonfunctional in low light, scotopic vision is produced exclusively through rod cells so therefore there is no color perception. Scotopic vision occurs at luminance levels of 10-2 to 10-6 cd/mē."

Well, that is about as technical as I want to get. Suffice it to say that when the light levels transition in the evening from bright light to darkness there is a short period of time where a person sees in black and white. This got me thinking about how to reproduce this phenomena. In addition to reproducing scotopic vision, the transition from daylight vision to night vision, I thought it would be interesting if all of the images also showed something in transition.



My idea must have worked because these images have received several awards over the years.The most prestigious being from the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado in 2007. The juror was George DeWolf, the senior editor of Camera Arts magazine. There was an excellent selection of artwork for this show and an on-line gallery can be found here.

While it seems that the black and white photographs in the series get the most attention, there are several that are in color. While not officially scotopic, I have always included these in the series because they are also an attempt to capture the transition from daylight to night light. I think this is especially successful in The Cows Come Home.

Prints of these photographs are now available on-line, however, if you are interested in limited edition prints please contact me directly via email at HellmannPhoto.com.