We're Painting the Roses Red

My last couple of blog posts have been about film, so while we're on the subject...

In my film days I made color slides. I didn't grok black and white and didn't have a dark room. So, I thought I'd give it a go and bought a few rolls of Ilford black and white print film. I'd send the film off to have it processed, just as I did with slide film, but when I got the prints back - what a disappointment! They weren't black and white! They were gray. So, I got a large piece of white paper and a black kitten, figuring this would have to be black and white, not gray. Right? Say hello to Monama, on black and white negative film, when he was still new, before he earned his name.

Monama was generally uncooperative, would not pose, would not stay on the white paper, and wanted to do what his kittenish self wanted to do. After several minutes of frustration, Monama's mommy, my clever wife Peggy, picked a hibiscus bloom and gave it to him. It worked! I finally was able to make a few exposures of more than just kitty footprints on white paper. When the prints came back, the flower, of course, was gray. So, I scanned the negative, and in one of my earliest attempts at digital editing, colored the flower red, just like the playing cards in Alice in Wonderland. ♫ We're painting the roses red. We're painting the roses red. ♫

I've been mulling over a blog post regarding my notions about black and white, but it hasn't gelled yet, so this will have to do for now. By the way, the blossom that Peggy gave to Monama wasn't red.