I've never been great about taking photos, but my wife always remembers. Recently spent some time consolidating all of the to Immich and being able to see the "memories" every day is incredible.
When I explain it to people, I always ask them to close their eyes and picture an apple on a table. I then ask them what color the apple is. Everyone I’ve ever done this with (except a sibling) answers a color.
I then say, “to me, there is no color, no apple, no table, no outline; nothing.” Always a leads to fun discussion :)
Well that was a fun side quest for the evening. One thing I read is aphantasia is common among siblings also.
This is very similar to how I reacted when I started reading “When the Mind’s Eye is Blind” [0] one day.
Up to that point (I think I was 31 at the time) I had always believed that when people talked about “visualizing” something, it was just a figure of speech. I didn’t realize people meant it literally.
30+ years of situations suddenly clicked and it was like a bomb of realization went off in my brain.
- [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-the-minds-ey...
I have read that eskimos lost in the snow and ice have been able to have day hallucinations visually as well auditory. They see and hear birds which do not exist.
A YouTuber simulated it with thick white paper taped to his head with white noise playing head phones after 15-30min, iirc.
Another avenue to look into aside from hallucinogens as referenced in the link could be deep meditation.
I've gone deep down a meditation rabbit hole since learning about all of this. No visual imagery yet, but I do see what I would have to describe as a non-specific shimmering/morphing "wave" that comes and goes. Nothing that I could describe as an image of something, but visual phenomena nonetheless.