There is a pond across the street that has 2 pair of Mallards on in. I see them almost every time we walk and I was hoping to get some photos. They must be camera shy because they weren't there when I tried this week. I will keep trying but meanwhile I will share these pretty pond reflections.
After that last color theory post on value I decided that I’d like to add a few more examples to the value discussion.
First I want to talk about the value of color. Just because you have the darkest shade of a color doesn’t mean that it’s a dark value.
In this photo I have pulled the darkest value of the rainbow colors. It’s easy to tell that the blue and purple are dark values and the yellow and orange are light values. But what about the red and green?
Of course they are really both medium values but which is darker? If I had fabrics this close in value I might convert them to gray to see the true value. This is where my second lesson comes in.
Using your photo editor to determine value isn’t always right.
I know I talked about using black and white images to check the comparative value of fabrics. My Photoshop software has several methods for converting a photo to black and white. Here’s the above photo converted using different filters:
This setting is the default for the “Enhance>Convert to Black and White” option. It’s called Scenic Landscape and converts the green to being a darker value than the red.
This setting is “Vivid Landscape” but I have a reall problem with the way it converts the red to being so much of a lighter value than the green. That's just not right.
One of my favorite settings to use is Infrared. It makes the darks as dark as possible and the lights as light as possible and you get to focus on the medium values.
Another way to get a black and white conversion is to use “Image>Mode>Grayscale”. I think this setting actually gave me the best comparative value of all the fabrics.
Confused? That wasn’t my goal. What I wanted to do is to tell you not to blindly rely on what your computer does to your photo. If it doesn’t seem right it probably isn’t! Try again with different settings. Test your software with photos of fabric that you feel you “know” and then find the setting in your software that gives you the right results. Then you will be more confident relying on the software when you have more difficult value puzzles to solve.
We use the term "hero" very liberally these days and certainly there are a lot of people who do really good things who need to be recognized. But I believe that we are a little too loose with the "hero" label and that it sometimes diminishes the worshiping that true heroes deserve.
Take a look at this face. That is Loiue Zamperini. He is a hero in ever sense of the word and Laura Hillenbrand (the author of Seabiscuit) tells his amazing story in Unborken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.
Here's the publisher's summary:
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.
The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.
Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.
Narrating the audiobook is Edward Herrman, a well known actor and a familiar voice on the History Channel. He does a perfect job of narrating Mr. Zamperini's story.
My father-in-law was a Lieutenant Commander aboard the USS Luce during the battle of Okinawa. The ship was attacked by Japanese suicide bombers and sunk. 126 of the 312 men aboard perished. For as long as I knew them, my in-laws hated Japanese people. I mostly ignored it and never really bothered to understand it. Additionally, I was never really educated about the Pacific front of WWII. All of my education about that war centered on the European theater. While this book is one man's experience in that war, it is a deep and rich experience and taught me things I needed to know about that time.
We are quick to judge actions that have happened in the past but we don't often put those actions in the right context and assess the decisions based on the information available and environment at the time. I have a greater understanding of the Japanese internment camps as I read about Louie being brutalized by someone he had known as a college friend. I also have a greater understanding of the feelings of my in-laws and others from that generation. Their hatred is understandable. It doesn't mean that the next generation has to feel the same way, but I understand their perspective and where it originates.
This is a very difficult book to listen to at times and I admit to looking up Louie's boigraphy at one point to see when/how he died just so I could get through a section of the book. It turns out that he alive and well today at the age of 94. This is the kind of history that we should be taught in school and Louie Zamperini is the kind of hero that we should celebrate every day. Even if history books aren't usually your forte, this is one story that is beautifully written and tells an important story that we should all read.
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