How Orange is Trump?
Saturday, January 07, 2017
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In this article in my NY Times today (the on-line version as I also get a daily
delivered hard copy at the front door here in Vancouver, BC) I noticed a
photograph taken by Todd Heisler for the NY Times. The article is by Susanne
Craig, Jo Becker & Jesse Drucker.
How we
perceive colour affects us even if we do not know it is happening.
Photographers, artists and media savvy folks know better.
Here in
Canada I noticed that the liberal media newspapers (I am a left wing liberal if
you must know!) would make our former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s
photographs that appeared in newspapers to be a tad green/cyan. Ugh!
As
humans, whose spectrum of colour is decidedly on the red, orange and yellow side
(and the reason we get into arguments about blue, green and turquoise and
cannot see ultra-violet) we are affected by colour. We see these more visible (the reason fire trucks are red) colours as warm and the others as
cool. A green face will never be an attractive one (ask Kermit who will
disagree). So if we make a politician’s face in a cool colour we will instantly
not like him (her) or at the very least be turned off or not trust.
Much has
been written about Trump’s orange face. Perhaps it is a tad. My guess is that
Jared Kushner’s shirt is white. I cannot make the same conclusion for Ivanka
Trump’s dress. It could be white or even cream.
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| My correction for colour |
The
photographer obviously did not use a flash and simply shot for existing light.
The above pot lights are not balanced for daylight so the camera saw the light
as yellowish/red. Either he did not bother to balance the colour correctly (or
at least make an attempt with his digital camera's automatic white balance) or the NY Times photo editor did not either, or did
not mind.
While I
am not a partisan of Trump the man or his policies I do believe that this
photograph affects how we perceive the man without us knowing that.
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| And a further tweak on my part |
I do not
believe in most conspiracies and this is certainly not one. It is just an
example of shoddy photojournalism. That my own NY Times is at it too, is embarrassing.
There is a perhaps an apocryphal story here in Vancouver of a wedding photographer who left his rolls of colour negative film at a lab for processing. He did not tell the lab that the bride was wearing a light pink dress. You can imagine the human colour printer attempting to make decent proofs.
There is a perhaps an apocryphal story here in Vancouver of a wedding photographer who left his rolls of colour negative film at a lab for processing. He did not tell the lab that the bride was wearing a light pink dress. You can imagine the human colour printer attempting to make decent proofs.
