What colour are your memories?

[RioRico]

Good question, and ambiguous answer: It's a mix, depending... on what it was, how and why I recall it, whether I recall seeing the actuality or a photo. So I think of (say) my adolescence as a mix of color AND b&w AND neither, just outlines. Most scenes are some faded color; others, I see in mono infrared or neon glare. But mostly I conjure-up visual memories that are neither nor B&W -- just the objects|subjects, raw.

CV: I was about raised in my dad's little darkroom, have been shooting for 5+ decades, have worked with various spectra, so I'm used to my mind PPing my vision. I can (right now!) lean back in my chair and look through my office door into the parlor, and I see the carpets & shelves & cabinets & collections, and I'll note the color temperature. But when I close my eyes and visualize the same view, I see mostly an outline map of the house and my location in relation to everything out there -- seeing around the corners too.

 

[Roger Hicks]

RioRico: BRILLIANT!

And I like your signature strap-line too.

Cheers,

R.

 

[ErnestoJL]

Thanks Randy.
IMHO, the way our brain registers or records visual information varies little from one individual to another however the way this info is stored shows some differences.
I guess that depending on the importance of the scenes recorded, the brain chooses to record full, mid or minimum information, and "generates" a series of thumbnails in order to make it easy to recover the info.
With time, the info is stored deeper and deeper, and sometimes one needs to locate the humbnail first and later gather the rest of the "data" to have the full picture. At least this is the way I think my mind works.
I can recall some flashes from my early childhood (less than 3 y.o.) and they are in full colour, but some memories from two or three years later are plain B&W. Then, newer memories come out easier than older ones, and with better detail. It seems that the brain records some kind of "compressed file" after some time but recent info is stored in RAW format. More important perhaps than visual info is that the brain is able to recall also the smell associated to the picture.
Best regards to all and Merry Xmas!!

Ernesto

 

[Dirk]

Color, but a muted version. like low contrast negative film prints from the 70's.

 

[Dylan Hope]

It depends on what I was shooting that day. Some days I recall in Tri-X, others in the way I processed those days images on my computer. If it wasn't a day I shot then I recall it 'normally'. Sometimes parts of the day are in different styles. Back in September I shot a protest in Auckland about the anti-piracy laws that were coming into effect, so the actual protest in my mind is in black and white, but before and after are in colour except for the occasional fade to black and white.
This only happens after I've seen the images though, until then I can usually remember everything in the right tones and what-not.

 

[p.giannakis]

Very muted colours and slightly out of focus. Like pretty much all of my childhood pictures taken by my father. Even in my dreams I have this sense sometimes...

 

[Spanik]

Never gave that any serious thought but I'd say it is in faded colours. It looks more like those coloured b&w films, not vivid. Unless it is of familiar suroundings, like at home. Kind of like it depends on how often I have seen it.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

This is interesting because it all seems very odd to me. I don't remember in images at all, now I come to think of it. The best way I can describe my memory is that I seem to remember a precis that's more like I might write a description. There's some sort of visual memory but it seems to work more as if I'm drawing what I remember, though that's not a good description, either.

That's probably why I take so many pictures, they're the only visual memory I have. When I look at a picture I took, whether yesterday or forty years ago, I find myself filling in emotions and things like the effect of a breeze on my face. I seem to dream like that as well.

I can't be alone in this, surely?

 

[zauhar]

Interesting that this old and interesting thread is suddenly resurrected.

My childhood memories are chiefly in weak or no color, but I just remembered a vivid scene the first day I got glasses (about seven years old, I being from the dark ages when no one knew you were half blind until school). I walked out of the optometrist's office, it was sunset, I was almost overcome by the intense orange and red I saw up and down the street. I had never seen things with clarity like that.

Supports the contention that 'important' memories are in color, for me at least.

Randy

 

[zauhar]

This is interesting because it all seems very odd to me. I don't remember in images at all, now I come to think of it. The best way I can describe my memory is that I seem to remember a precis that's more like I might write a description. There's some sort of visual memory but it seems to work more as if I'm drawing what I remember, though that's not a good description, either.

That's probably why I take so many pictures, they're the only visual memory I have. When I look at a picture I took, whether yesterday or forty years ago, I find myself filling in emotions and things like the effect of a breeze on my face. I seem to dream like that as well.

I can't be alone in this, surely?

That's fascinating. I can understand that (sort of), although my mind does not work that way. But you are surely not alone, it's just that most people don't try to verbalize how their own mind works.

The psychiatrist Jung was perhaps the first to recognize that different people really live in totally different cognitive worlds, although he wasn't talking so much about how memories are pulled up. I am trying to spend some time learning more about this.

Randy

 

[p.giannakis]

The reason I started this threat is because memories is an area of my interest. I work as a psychoanalyst and I have noticed that people will generally not refer to colours when discussing their memories. When discussing pleasant past memories, colour might be mentioned as part of the narrative. In dysphoric memories, colour is mostly absent from the narrative unless it is somehow related to a traumatic event (i.e. "I was hit by a red car....")

 

[Sparrow]

This is interesting because it all seems very odd to me. I don't remember in images at all, now I come to think of it. The best way I can describe my memory is that I seem to remember a precis that's more like I might write a description. There's some sort of visual memory but it seems to work more as if I'm drawing what I remember, though that's not a good description, either.

That's probably why I take so many pictures, they're the only visual memory I have. When I look at a picture I took, whether yesterday or forty years ago, I find myself filling in emotions and things like the effect of a breeze on my face. I seem to dream like that as well.

I can't be alone in this, surely?

... all my memory is graphic ... even things I've only ever read of heard on the wireless ... which is odd now I think about it.

... and my colour memory is arbitrary ... when the TV series Enterprise was repeated I was surprised to find T'Pol's cat-suit wasn't green, as it had always been so in my memory

 

[Photo_Smith]

All of my memories are like little colour films, I can't imagine why they would fade or turn mono. That said it is true we don't remember colour well, few people shown a colour then asked later to pick it from pack can do that.
I suppose most people find events and people what drives memory, I can close my eyes and describe my childhood toys in full colour, the colour of my dads first car including number plate (I was under four when we sold it) and my family have few photographs.
But then I do have a very good recall-or so I'm told.

 

[Andrea Taurisano]

My memories are in color. It's the present that's monochrome and gritty.

 

[John E Earley]

This is interesting because it all seems very odd to me. I don't remember in images at all, now I come to think of it. The best way I can describe my memory is that I seem to remember a precis that's more like I might write a description. There's some sort of visual memory but it seems to work more as if I'm drawing what I remember, though that's not a good description, either.

That's probably why I take so many pictures, they're the only visual memory I have. When I look at a picture I took, whether yesterday or forty years ago, I find myself filling in emotions and things like the effect of a breeze on my face. I seem to dream like that as well.

I can't be alone in this, surely?

Very interesting. I don't really dream in images. I am aware of the dream as a happening, as an understanding, as if it was being described to me or rather as if I was describing it myself. This is felt in an emotional way that makes it seem real.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

Very interesting. I don't really dream in images. I am aware of the dream as a happening, as an understanding, as if it was being described to me or rather as if I was describing it myself. This is felt in an emotional way that makes it seem real.

Yes, that's somewhat similar to how my dreams work, although there's more of a feeling of participation involved than you seem to be describing. Also, although my dreams seem real, I'm often aware that I am dreaming and can control events. Interestingly, there is a visual element in the dream that's absent from my memory. If you like, when I remember a dream, I remember things I "saw" but I don't "see" them in my memory.

 

[Sparrow]

All of my memories are like little colour films, I can't imagine why they would fade or turn mono. That said it is true we don't remember colour well, few people shown a colour then asked later to pick it from pack can do that.
I suppose most people find events and people what drives memory, I can close my eyes and describe my childhood toys in full colour, the colour of my dads first car including number plate (I was under four when we sold it) and my family have few photographs.
But then I do have a very good recall-or so I'm told.

... the paper I read claimed it was 'to save space on the hard-drive' so to speak

 

[Brian Atherton]

My memories are monochrome.

This said, I have difficulty in actually describing my memories as images. The best I can say is that they are some kind of feeling that invokes a visually fuzzy, ill-defined and vague image.

However, when I dream, for the most part, it is in colour. It's very odd, this disparity between my recall (memory) of events in monochrome and my dreams, which predominately are in colour.

 

[daveleo]

I remember in very unsaturated colors, grainy look, and the scenes are most often underexposed by about one f-stop.

 

[Sid836]

A ton of grey and out of focus shots.