Light arriving at an opaque surface is like me arriving at a buffet. it’s all about which dish will be rejected and which dish will be ingested, since the color of something is determined by which wavelengths of light are reflected and which wavelengths are absorbed. turn away all wavelengths and you are a big white light, eat everything and you are a massive black pig.

sometimes the question is exactly which colors are not being represented.

of course the quality of the buffet matters, and the last time i was faced with a tray of smoked salmon at a breakfast buffet in Hawaii i took the advice of a friend’s father, who suggested a special way to use the tongs. he told me to open it up and run it parallel along the bottom of the platter so you pick up the entire half of a wild salmon in one stroke. he said “you get some looks, but hey, they’ll bring another one out for the other guests.”
one alternative to this is to make your own gravlax, which is perfect if you are tearing down your deck and have some bricks handy to press the fish with. the great thing about making your own is that you can eat it like a burrito and no will give you “some look.” incidentally, fish scales are not opaque surfaces, they are translucent, which means they transmit light as they scatter it, as opposed to plastic wrap, which also transmits light but absorbs the transmitted light.