Close to my home is this little lake called ‘Verdronken Bos’ which translates to ‘Drowned Forest’. Forest is a pretty big word for this particular collection of sunken trees, and even lake is a pretty big word for this modest body of water. It is very pretty nevertheless.

These photos show the sunset in succesion with about a half hour interval. The first was taken toward the sun, the others away from the sun. I used long exposures in combination with exposure bracketing to pull back the shadows and allow for the camera to capture more colour information. This basically means that this is what we would see if only our eyes were better equipped for seeing in the dark.

Unfortunately, there’s a trade off between seeing saturated colours like humans do in daylight, and having good night vision like cats. The biggest difference between human vision and cat vision is in the retina, a layer of tissue at the back of the eye that contains cells called photoreceptors. The photoreceptors convert light rays into electrical signals, which are processed by nerve cells, sent to the brain, and translated into the images we see.

The two types of photoreceptor cells are known as rods and cones. Rods are responsible for peripheral and night vision. They detect brightness and shades of gray. Cones are responsible for day vision and colour perception.

Cats have a high concentration of rod receptors and a low concentration of cone receptors. Humans have the opposite, which is why we can’t see as well at night but can detect colors better.