We are all wearing pink t-shirts on October Fridays for breast cancer awareness. Our t-shirts mostly make me aware how difficult it is to accurately capture color with a camera, display it online, or describe it in words. Coworkers agree the shirts are "pink", but there are
so very many pinks in the world!
How do we capture color? How do we describe color? How much emotion is packed into color? How many chemicals? Is the pink natural or artificial?
Capturing the exact pink of the shirts has been a big fail. I've tried photos with and without flash, in daylight and under CFL lights, In desperation I scanned a sleeve. No go.
My coworkers call the shirts "
Pepto-Bismol pink". Not just to be argumentative, I insist the color is more Bazooka Bubble Gum pink. A bit warmer, slightly less blue and more saturated...more technicolor. It might glow in the dusk...
...filled with favorite childhood memories of the gum, lollipop, and balloon each child received from the bartender after a fried chicken dinner at
Lee's Restaurant. What fun to head home opening the gum wrapper to find a
Bazooka Joe comic.
Will the shirts bleed? Will they fade? These are practical consideration as well as descriptors. So far my shirt has not turned any items pink in the laundry. It seems unfaded.
On the moisture scale, Pepto-Bismol pink is chalkier, more white-knuckle gripping the dash when you feel queasy in the mountains. Chewing a tablet or chugging it straight from the bottle is not the same color as a celebration with Bazooka gum.
Our shirts are the color of neon flamingos after a big supper of Disney animated shrimp in a salty bay. They need the organic quality of saliva and some Beach Boys playing on the car radio...
These shirts are more begonia than vinca, more Midge than Barbie, more beauty salon than OB/Gyn surprisingly. That must hint at acetone and jobs dependent on customer tips. This pink could be frozen then deep-fried at the state fair. It is not the right pink for the baby's crib, the flower girl dress, or frosting cake donuts.
The succulent hen and chicks plant out on the balcony is blooming. The little blooms are lovely, but this means the
hen is about to die.
Check out Pantone Bubble Gum
here.
olor
The scientific description of color, or colorimetry, involves the specification of all relevant properties of a color either subjectively or objectively. The subjective description gives the hue, saturation, and lightness or brightness of a color. Hue refers to what is commonly called color, i.e., red, green, blue-green, orange, etc. Saturation refers to the richness of a hue as compared to a gray of the same brightness; in some color notation systems, saturation is also known as chroma. The brightness of a light source or the lightness of an opaque object is measured on a scale ranging from dim to bright for a source or from black to white for an opaque object (or from black to colorless for a transparent object). In some systems, brightness is called value. A subjective color notation system provides comparison samples of colors rated according to these three properties. In an objective system for color description, the corresponding properties are dominant wavelength, purity, and luminance. Much of the research in objective color description has been carried out in cooperation with the Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage (CIE), which has set standards for such measurements. In addition to the description of color according to these physical and psychological standards, a number of color-related physiological and psychological phenomena have been studied. These include color constancy under varying viewing conditions, color contrast, afterimages, and advancing and retreating colors.
© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder
