Snap Shots: Colour or Black and White?

by Harry Flashman

I can remember when all photography was done in Black and White (B&W). You too? To get different colours, toners were added to the final bath for the prints - selenium, sepia, iodine - they all gave a different “cast”, but it was still B&W with a tinge of something else.

The next thing we did was to hand colour B&W to give blue eyes staring out of a grey face which had red lips. Hardly realistic.

However, we then invented colour film. We learned how to make it so cheaply that everyone could afford to use it. We made it so responsive that any simple camera could handle it. We made it universally popular.

This is no object of wonder. We live in a colourful world - and especially so in Tropical Thailand. However, just how “true” are the colours you get back from your friendly one hour photo processors? (Incidentally, have you noticed that most one hour places tell you to come back in three?)

Unfortunately, colour changes from photo processing shop to photo processing shop and from brand to brand and film speed (ISO rating) to film speed. As an exercise, take the same subject with the same camera, at the same time of day with different films and then compare the end results. The camera never lies? It certainly bends the truth with colours.

You will also get spectacular differences in colour depending upon the time of day. The “colour” of the sun’s rays is measured in a scale called Kelvin degrees and this differs dependent upon the time of day. The “blue” end of the range is in the morning and the “red” end in the afternoon. When you are using sunlight as the source of light for your photographs, the colour “temperature” (the degrees Kelvin thing) of the sun’s rays will give the overall cast to the picture. This is why you get “warm” (orange-red) tones in the late afternoon and “cold” (bluish) tones in the mornings.

Now it doesn’t stop with orange and blue. If you use other sources of illumination for your photographs, you will get even more different colour casts. Look at any photographs you have taken where fluoro lights were the principal light source. The resulting photo will have a distinctly “green” hue. Similarly, if “ordinary” (tungsten) light bulbs are the light source you will get a very strong orange cast to the photograph.

Take a look at the shots I have used this week to illustrate colour shift. Even though they are printed in glorious newspaper grey monocolour, you will see an obvious difference. These shots were taken at an open air night concert, and the guitarist is Lam Morrison, for the music buffs. The two shots were taken less than 5 seconds apart, but they look totally different, do they not? The shot on the left was taken by using the flash with the camera (which overpowers the stage lights), while the one on the right was taken after turning the flash off and letting the stage lights be the source of illumination. If it were in colour, you would actually see that the left hand side is blue, while the right hand side is a yellow/green.

Pro shooters will use this colour shift to impart a mood to their shots. When taking a restaurant, for example, you want to evoke a warm, friendly mood. So, turn off all the fluoro’s and the camera’s flash and turn up all the tungsten lights. End result is that warm inviting glow.

Now, if on the other hand you want the bleak wintery feel to a photo, get up early in the morning and take the shot of someone standing alone on a windswept beach. The blue cast from the early morning sun will do that for you. If you are not an early riser, then bung a blue filter on the lens and get the same effect - that cold blue cast through the picture. (But that’s an old pro shooter’s trick!)

with Andrew Watson

Here we are, at the ‘I’ word, a word which in the dark world of gratuitous malevolence, people might dare only to whisper. Where fear and fascism reign, the voice of integrity is suspicious, seditious. In such places I would love to plaster the walls with the word, hang banners ten feet high! Daub the word on walls a hundred times in the fashion of Graham Chapman in “Life of Brian”.

Integrity can seem like a golden light which brings peace and warmth, purity of conscience and a clear path, free from regret. It is not the same as righteousness from which it should be distinguished. The remorseless pursuit of righteousness, if left unchecked, can easily develop into an aggressive nature, unforgiving and intolerant of human weakness and fallibility, unable to engage in reconciliation or consider compassion. In the place of integrity, paranoia and wild imaginings are cancerous impostors. Last week, I was sent a poem written by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, entitled; “From the place where we are right” which talks about the hardness which can overcome the determinedly righteous.

From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the Spring.

The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.

But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plough.
And a whisper will be heard
in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.

So, maybe in the self-chastening determination to demonstrate integrity, it is possible to lose sight of it altogether? The “wood for the trees” and all that? English poet Samuel Johnson offers some clarification here, “Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful”. So what, then, if neither integrity nor knowledge are present? I grant this condition is unusual, but is there anything to be done in such a seemingly hopeless case? In my experience, it’s best to follow Howard Gardner’s advice, echoed on these pages by many, which is; when asked or expected to compromise ethically, morally or even legally, Get out! If that’s the only way to keep your integrity intact.

I think it is true that maintaining your integrity can be a lonely business, especially if it is under threat. You can reach the mountain top and find it a desolate and lonely place. But the air is pure and you can take a long deep breath and just maybe, you can smile. But in some areas of the world, one might search long and hard before recognising kin. When you do, these people are like a new family. There is often much shared experience, sometimes but not necessarily painful, which might somewhere along the line, I would have thought, increase wisdom whilst simultaneously decreasing the potential we all have to repeatedly make the same mistakes. “What does ‘integrity’ mean, really?” Students ask me. “It means doing the right thing.” I reply. “Make sure you always do the right thing, with strength and honour”. I suppose integrity is like an ethical thread which weaves its way through our being. And, as my students remind me (they say it in the movies somewhere), “What we do in life echoes throughout eternity.”

In education, a belief that the primary purpose of schools is to nurture the human spirit and to shape society is one which can be uncomfortable. It is one which requires consistent reflection and challenge. Transformational leadership requires personal integrity. According to Chris Wright, part of the new breed of “Super head”, from whom integrity positively radiates, “The key role for the school leader is to communicate a vision for the school community which encapsulates what it is to be truly human within the context in which the school faces itself. To challenge the stereotypes of prejudice and the dynamics of hatred can be uncomfortable. For instance, to critically reflect upon the rise of terrorism in the UK can often lead to uncomfortable conversations.”

But if the role of a leader is clearly critical, it is important to point out that pursuing or maintaining integrity is not an elitist concept, the preserve of the few at the expense of the many. On the contrary. In its purist sense, integrity’s heart is egalitarian. It’s classless. It could reasonably be argued to have a spiritual dimension. I think it is true that in order to demonstrate integrity, we are often required to challenge and overcome our own preconceptions, assumptions and prejudice, and perhaps go still further, if we ever intend to fight iniquity on behalf of others. Moreover, it is a code by which we live, reflected in what we do and how we do it, personally and professionally. So how, you might very well ask, does someone like Chris Wright live out in reality what he professes to be important? Well, firstly, he is passionate about his personal Christian faith. Secondly, he is committed to living out his belief and understanding of his faith which is by demonstrating love and compassion for all human beings in respect of recognition of God’s image in each. Thirdly, his marriage to a Pakistani Muslim is a manifestation of his belief in love as the best way to celebrate life, with all its wondrous diversity. Fourthly, professionally, his work has included developing multi-faith “encounter” projects, publishing educational material on the Celebration of Diversity in the UK and taking a leading role in regenerating his city’s aesthetic, educational and cultural identity. Perhaps what Chris does sums it up. He is being true to his own self. Maybe that’s what integrity is, after all.
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Next Week: Knowledge and the Curriculum

Dear Hillary,
The neighbours in our condominium block have a cat. I think it is a kitten, but it is driving us both crazy. The owners are out all day and the cat calls out all day. When they come home it appears that it must be a perfectly behaved little kitty because there is never another mew out of it until they leave again the next morning, when it starts all over again. We have tried speaking to the owners, but they are a European couple and do not seem to understand any English. The condo management says that pets are not allowed. They are in the end unit, so we are the only ones that have to put up with their noisy pussy cat. What should we do? Will the management help?
George and Mildred
Dear George and Mildred,
There are only two people left to talk to here. Management and the cat itself. Since its owners do not understand you, I doubt if the cat will. Invite the management people up during the day to hear it, if it is that bad. Surely you could have thought of this yourself; however, I think you probably do need some help.
Dear Hillary,
Once a week I have a night out with the boys at work. Usually this means I get home in the wee small hours (2 a.m. closing time these days) and sometimes I am a little the worse for wear as a couple of the lads are top drinkers. My girlfriend is starting to crack up a bit about this one night a week. I reckon she is being unreasonable, as I used to get home even later before the crackdowns in the past year. What can I tell her to make her see that this is just harmless fun with the lads and is a break for me from family responsibilities?
Glen
Dear Glen,
I want you to change roles with your girlfriend for one night. She is going to go out with the girls from work and is going to come home at something past two, decidedly the worse for wear. In other words, very drunk. Are you going to sit back happily and let this happen every week? Will you happily sit at home and not wonder where she is? Will you sit there calmly watching TV soap operas about cheating husbands and wives (that’s all there is on Thai TV) and not worry? Or are you going to crack up about it? It is only Scottish stags that are the “monarchs of the glen”. I think you should reconsider your responsibilities to the young lady. One can’t be a stag forever!
Dear Hillary,
This year I went on holidays for a few days in Jomtien, instead of Chiang Mai. The beach road has certainly changed since I was there last, but the vendors were just the same, pestering us with fairy floss, wooden planes, sunglasses, hammocks, som tum, tod mun pla and ice creams. But there was something different there too, as we noticed that the police were coming along the beach and the vendors would go scurrying off like sandcrabs and disappear. However, about ten minutes after the police swoop, the vendors were all back again. Where do they go to Hillary, when the police come? They just disappeared like magic! Is it illegal for them to be on the beach?
Sandgroper
Dear Sandgroper,
Beach vendors are a curse and spoil my own little forays to the land of deck chairs and banana boats. Hillary would imagine that they should have some sort of a permit, just the same as the beach concessionaires have. I commend the police for helping clear the beaches, but I am just a little worried that I will next be woken up by a policeman asking if I would like to buy some peace and quiet. But that would never happen, would it! Not in Thailand, now that complete government backed transparency is here.
Dear Hillary,
I read much about the problems people seem to have with the songtaews and even though I only come here once a year I felt moved to write to you, following my experience with one the other day. Wishing to only go a short way to the market and then return, I hailed a bus and explained what I wanted. A fare was agreed upon and the trip was carried out successfully, with him waiting for me at the market. I was a little longer than I expected, but he took it all with good graces. When I returned home I gave him more than the agreed fare, because of the extra waiting time, but he refused to take the extra! Unfortunately I did not get his number, but I just wanted to let others know not to judge them all by one.
Nancy
Dear Nancy,
I am delighted to hear this, as undoubtedly the drivers do get painted in a bad light, but I must also add that some of their vehicles look as if they have also been painted in a bad light too! For a tourist venue, the drabness of our public transport, as frequent as the songtaews may be, is appalling. Hillary would like to see the city fathers suggesting some bright florals, rather than the dull rusting monochromes we have right now.

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