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| 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.