How Orange is Trump?
Donald J. Trump officially announced his campaign for the presidency at Trump Tower in Manhattan on June 16, 2015, with his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, at his side. Todd Heisler/The New York Times
In this article in my NY Times today (the on-line version as I also get a daily delivered hard copy at the front door here in Vancouver, BC) I noticed a photograph taken by Todd Heisler for the NY Times. The article is by Susanne Craig, Jo Becker & Jesse Drucker.
How we perceive colour affects us even if we do not know it is happening. Photographers, artists and media savvy folks know better.
Here in Canada I noticed that the liberal media newspapers (I am a left wing liberal if you must know!) would make our former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s photographs that appeared in newspapers to be a tad green/cyan. Ugh!
As humans, whose spectrum of colour is decidedly on the red, orange and yellow side (and the reason we get into arguments about blue, green and turquoise and cannot see ultra-violet) we are affected by colour. We see these more visible (the reason fire trucks are red) colours as warm and the others as cool. A green face will never be an attractive one (ask Kermit who will disagree). So if we make a politician’s face in a cool colour we will instantly not like him (her) or at the very least be turned off or not trust.
Much has been written about Trump’s orange face. Perhaps it is a tad. My guess is that Jared Kushner’s shirt is white. I cannot make the same conclusion for Ivanka Trump’s dress. It could be white or even cream.
The photographer obviously did not use a flash and simply shot for existing light. The above pot lights are not balanced for daylight so the camera read the light as yellowish/red. Either he did not bother to balance the colour correctly (or at least make an attempt with his digital camera’s automatic white balance) or the NY Times photo editor did not either, or did not mind.
While I am not a partisan of Trump the man or his policies I do believe that this photograph affects how we perceive the man without us knowing that.
I do not believe in most conspiracies and this is certainly not one. It is just an example of shoddy photojournalism. That my own NY Times is at it too, is embarrassing.
There is a perhaps an apocryphal story here in Vancouver of a wedding photographer in the 80s who left his rolls of colour negative film at a lab for processing. He did not tell the lab that the bride was wearing a light pink dress. You can imagine the human colour printer attempting to make decent proofs.
Originally published at blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com.
