COLORS AND COWS

The color of this year, tada......is Living Coral.  Last year?  Ultra Violet Blue.

The first color of the year, in 2000, was cerulean:

From 2001 to 2017?  Click here.

What is the Pantone Color Institute, and how do they get the authority for selecting the Color of the Year?

• U.S, corporation headquartered in New Jersey.
• The Levine brothers founded the company in the 1950's, and was bought out by X-Rite in 2007.
• They just took the initiative in 2000, and the world acknowledged.

I've long been enamored with color.  My favorite course at Stanford was Color, out of the Art Department.  In all my years there I took as many art courses as chemical engineering ones.  My books feature colors, and I love rainbows.  In SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity, one chapter was called Teaching Rainbows.

It so happened that the 15 Craigside Photo Club met yesterday, beginning with lunch honoring our mentor, Scott Kubo (to the left) of the Honolulu Museum of Art.  We shared a Stanford Pence Ranch Chardonnay from Santa Barbara.  There must now be 15 in the club.  

We had an assignment this month to shoot black and white photos.  I thus took two cameras, one for color and the other for B/W.  I thought in every comparison, the color looked better than the B/W.  Here are just two pairs:

You can't see the honohono orchids in B/W.  Here is another example of the recent lunar eclipse:

I don't think the group agreed with me.  They thought that there are certain moods and such where black and white might prevail.  I would tend to agree with them.  It's just that I guess I don't know how to take black and white photos.

Have you heard of 7-year old Knickers, a giant Australian Holstein steer (neutered male)?  He stands 6 feet 4 inches tall at the shoulders and weighs in at almost 3100 pounds.  The average female weighs 2400 pounds.  Save for a very few precious functional bulls, most males are "processed" between two and three years old.  Females give calves and milk and live a longer life.  I should add that the term cow is inappropriate in the title, for cows are only females, and the giants of this species are all males.

However, Bellino, a Chianina from Italy is a little more that 6 feet 6 inches at the shoulders.  The world record for cattle weight was set in 1955 by Donetto, a Chianina bull, at 3836 pounds.  Here is a video of the Chianina.

Speaking of Italy, as I will next week be visiting its neighbor, France, Mount Etna is collapsing into the Mediterranean, and if it falls into the sea, there will be be a mega-tsunami.

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