Pink

Inspirational song: Kodachrome (Simon & Garfunkel)

I enjoy a nice morning drive, every once in a while. Sometimes it can be quite lovely. Less so if it's primarily on an interstate, and it's reduced by a factor of 10 when the interstate is crowded because half the region is on their way to Sturgis on said road. It gets a whole lot less fun when the trip is in vain, and you have to buy gas in an expensive place along the way rather than making it all the way back home where it's cheap. (I know, I know. It was all of 80 cents more for the entire tank, but it's the principle of the thing.) I arrived back home tired and I have to go back Monday morning ssuuppeerr early, in the hopes that I have success then.

I had ordered new business cards. I stopped using a Google voice number, because I could never figure out how to make it broadcast the number so people would pick up the call. I went back to just using my cell phone, and it wasn't very professional having to write my number in ball point pen on the back of the card. In order to differentiate the two versions of the cards at a glance, I used a different photo from the same shoot. The original picture had a lot of Photoshopping, with color correction and careful cleanup. The new pictures only had the slightest touch up, so that any blonde flyaway hairs weren't visible against the black backdrop. I asked the guy at the print shop to crop the picture just a tiny bit and fit it into the old file they used last time. He sent a proof, and it looked great, or so I thought.

I picked up the cards, and only glanced at them in the shop. After I paid, I sat in the car and pried open the box. I studied the picture for several minutes, trying to decide whether to complain. Eventually I got over my meekness, and took them back in to ask whether I had submitted a photo with too low of a resolution or what. Turns out the photo was fine, but they said light colored hair (noticeably strawberry blonde on that day) ends up getting more white dots of ink than darker hair, making it look a little speckled. Then I said, "I know I have a bad habit of turning bright pink at the first exposure to heat, but this is crazy." They admitted that the particular printing press they used had a problem with overspraying the magenta toner, and they could reprint on the other press for me. They made a test page, and we compared the two pictures. Big difference. My skin looks pretty pale in the best version, but anymore it looks like that every day. I'm far more comfortable handing out cards looking too pale than looking like I had been dipped in cochineal dye.