It’s not hot pink…

Before digital photography and computers, artists took slides of their work with a 35mm camera.  Besides being terrified to show my art (although I did occasionally) I was also terrified of taking pictures of my work.  It was difficult enough, but when you’re in a panic about it as well, it makes it almost impossible.   Living where I did in upstate NY there were only 2 places to get slides developed in less than a week and they were both about an hour away.    Inevitably I would pick up the slides and they were out of focus or the color was off or sometimes the film wouldn’t even have gone through the camera because I loaded it wrong.   And it was expensive, the camera, the film and the developing.

But thankfully, all that has changed.  Now I can take a picture with my phone, adjust the focus and color on my computer and post it on my blog for all the world to see in minutes and for very little money.

So today when I looked at my comments and saw a number of people refer to my “hot pink pillow” I was dismayed and awash in  picture taking memories.  I’m sorry to disappoint, but the  pillow is not hot pink.  I didn’t even think of it as pink when I made it.  I got the shirt I used to make it out of my box of orange fabric.  Now, I know colors change next to other colors and two people can look at the same color and see it completely different, so the pillow may be closer to pink than orange, but it’s not the neon pink that it appears to be in my photo.

So what happened?  I just couldn’t get an accurate depiction of the pillow no matter where I photographed it or in what light. And I couldn’t adjust the colors on my computer either.  But I wanted to post it on my blog even thought it wasn’t quite right.  So I did.  And now I have a bunch of people telling me they love the color… but the color they love isn’t the color of the pillow.

Luckily, I have a photographer in the family, so I asked Jon if he would take a picture of the pillow and try to get the colors right.  The first photo, Jon’s photo, is pretty much what the pillow looks like.  You can compare it to my photo from yesterdays blog beneath it.  As you can see, it’s not hot pink.

So what’s the lesson?  It’s the same one I didn’t learn before digital photography, sometimes I just have to let someone else take the picture.   I shouldn’t put up bad photos on my blog.   And I should make a hot pink pillow.