Ted Turtin

Artificial Intelligence and Personal Style in Photography
 

BC businessman Ted Turtin had the audacity to start a light bulb Factory in Burnaby in the early 80s. I have little recollection on how I took this photograph before the invention of Photoshop. I remember that I soldered a wire to the bottom of the bulb and they put several coats of heavy varnish. I could then touch that bottom while the wire was connected with a plug to the wall and not get a shock.

I thought of this photograph when the light on the night table on Rosemary’s side of the bed burned out. I went upstairs to my guest room where I have a drawer full of incandescent bulbs in a large range of watts. When incandescent bulbs were being phased out years ago and being replaced by laser ones Rosemary suggested we buy the supply.

Incandescent bulbs in photography are called tungsten because of the filaments inside made of that metal. In that last century we film photographers knew that when we took colour negative or slide photographs, when they were taken with the tungsten light bulbs in a room the resulting colour would be a warm red one. The reason for this is that daylight colour film was rated for about 5500 Degrees Kelvin. That is the colour of light, midsummer at noon in Washington DC. When Kodachrome was invented the folks at Kodak thought that the US was the centre (not centre) of the world and balanced Kodachrome to that colour temperature.

Believe it or not, all digital cameras today are all balanced to that!

In order to get the “correct’colour of photographs taken in tungsten interiors such as TV studios etc we would use  Tungsten  Balanced colour film.

All the above thanks to Rosemary making me buy incandescent light bulbs.

In Mexico these bulbs are called focos and in my Argentina they are bombitas.