When one sees suffering or joy, very often there can be a mirroring of that same emotional response reflected in oneself. People laugh more easily when the TV or movie injects a laugh-track. When actors on a stage emote, sometimes some of the audience does, too. And in the case of torturers, there is some research that says the perpetrator feels some of the offense that the victim does. All these kinds of phenomena are based on brain features called mirror neurons: connections, meaning, relevance, and emotional response echoing the external conditions within one’s own self. But perhaps there is some kind of internal resonance not only to people one sees or reads about, but also to some kind of interior response to landscape, light, and ever-changing weather and seasons of the year.
People have different tastes in food, music, art, and the company they keep. Sometimes these tastes come from parents and place of upbringing, as if by osmosis. Other times these are “acquired tastes” that one learns as opportunities present themselves, or as the person purposively seeks out things that expand her or his range of knowledge and personal preferences. One can cultivate expertise and gourmet delight in the many kinds of coffee, wine, whisky, or just about any other sensory experience. When it comes to noticing and responding to various kinds of light, one’s tastes can be developed from more and more experiences of composing photos for personal enjoyment or for public use.
One’s attraction to light might center on winter light that falls in long shadows and weak power; or the opposite, the contrasty, abundant light of high summer. Perhaps it is the hours near sunrise and sunset: the Golden Hour, the Blue Hour, and darkening into twilight and full night. Others may find their attention drawn to penumbral light, just outside the pool of direct light but still indirectly lit by those strong rays adjacently. Photographers devoted to black and white may train themselves to disregard the patterns and relationships found in color and instead focus on the geometry of the composition: foreground and background, texture and angle, masses of shadow and light. In any case, in the course of accumulating more hours of picture-taking experience and expanding the range of subjects composed, the person’s taste for light may develop into a highly refined ability to distinguish between differing conditions and (emotional) effect. And the person’s appetite for viewing and composing pictures may grow at the same time, too. But how might “mirror neurons” intersect one’s taste in light?
The most obvious relationship between interior responsiveness and developing an interest and appetite of light comes from emotional response. As one chases certain kinds of light, there is satisfaction in finding and recording the subject. This forms a positive reinforcement loop: the more one succeeds, the more one hungers for more success. Another part of this relationship between external sights and internal delight comes from the spark of recognition. The external lighting conditions trigger something inside the photographer – maybe it is analogous to receptors in one’s brain (not for chemicals or micro-organisms; some persons respond more than others, or not at all); or maybe it is these specialized mirror neurons that reflect the external subject in the person’s own mind. Whatever the mechanism may be, (1) tastes can be developed and refined, (2) tastes can grow wider, and (3) appetite can grow bigger.
A related discussion could explore resonance or taste for other things beside light. For example, a photographer working on coastal compositions will develop more refined tastes for taking pictures and for looking closely at the pictures made by others of this environment. Photographers who specialize in dusk or low-light conditions will also develop a taste for these particular compositions. Moving beyond visual matters, perhaps there are mirror neurons that sympathetically vibrate in the presence of nature, of pastoral scenes, or in urban settings. In other words, the relationship with and the emotional response that a person feels in various environments (fearfully so, or in delighted contentment) may parallel the way that light or music or other sensory cues of the external world ring within one’s self.
In summary, a person’s path of development with regard to noticing light and composing pictures with it (‘writing with light’) can be described as “having a taste for light,” a hunger or an appetite for pictures. Part of the growth in one’s tastes at the world’s “feast for the eyes” seems to come from mirror neurons, those internal features that react to other people (and living creatures more generally). Even if those specialized neurons do not directly apply to things like music or light and it turns out that other brain structures are concerned with the emotional response and recognition in light or music, still the example of mirror neurons makes a nice figure of speech to explain the reason why interior response to the environment can grow so that the person’s “taste” for light develops.
see2think 