Color Crush: Hot Pink

lumi has a color crush…BUT WHAT COLOR IS IT?  learning the HUGE world of hot pink by lumi

It came upon the 8 o’clock hour, while this Auntie was at work, of all places. Suddenly and like-totally, a bottle full of memories!  Lumi held the bottle and read it’s name, Sinful Colors “24/7 .” Staring into its almost entirely matte core, lumi thought of so many things: jem, wham, uptown julie brown, the fresh prince, lisa frank, twisted sister,debbie gibson, slap bracelets, and glow rings.  This was going to be the best nail polish ever!  And what better way to celebrate the best nails polish than with the best pictures and a commemorative blog celebrating the color? Oh hot pink how I love thee, kind of blog…To that aim and right after work, this auntie ran home to check a bit on google to find everyone  pictures of this magnificent nail polish!  But infuriating picture after infuriating picture , showed some dull imitation of the hot pink that was now gracing this auntie’s nails.  Okay, well actually, this one came close but lumi wondered if it wasn’t possible to do better to show more of the hot pink? This first led Lumi to research HOT PINK itself.  And let me tells you ladies and fellas…your idea, my idea, his and her idea of what HOT PINK is?  Well chances are, they are all different! Hot pink is defined by wordnik simply as “a bright vibrant pink color”   and this seems to be the acceptable definition everywhere!   Just look at and love all the colors considered under the undulating umbrella of hot pink: the historical “shocking pink”

internet specific hotpink(nospaces on purpose)

check out magenta and fuchsia that are said to be synonymous with each and hot pink!

and cerise

Before lumi’s head spun off, she realized that this pink, the pink of her 24/7 Sinful Colors nails, and the pink of her dreams was not indeed HOT PINK, per say.   Maybe that’s why Aunt Linda always called in PAHNK?  And PAHNK it is.Sometimes also lovingly referred to as “blindingly”  But technically speaking it seems this pink is NEON PINK or Fluorescent Pink.  Now, finally,  lumi was really getting somewhere. And now it was time to hit the books and figure out how color really works! Sort of..because, well after reading endless reams of very boring things, Lumi found a cartoon that said it all in fifty seconds rather than 250 pages:

And what is it about these particular pinks that makes it so dyingly difficult to find a picture of them?  Well here you go:  It seems neon colors absorb more uhmm parts of the light and then give it it back at a higher rate than we are used to…in other words – they actually do DAY GLOW.  You also NEED to know that when the electrons in the neon color take in all that light, they are called excited electrons!  Oh yeah! Of course neon colors come from excited electrons!  And very like lumi and wicked, these electrons get very excited and take on ALOT and then get so full they have to blow it all out and then back to empty!  And anyone who has ever taken pictures of anything that has its own light source ,like neon signs or the sun, knows that it is no easy task to capture the thing that you see on your film or screen!  I followed some hints by those who have written extensively about sunsets and neon signs AND used Auntie Wicked’s suggestion of using a blue or green backgrounds: this makes perfect sense because neon colors actually suck in blue light and emit red! OMG! So here is one of the shots from going out EARLY IN THE MORNING AND USING BLUE BACKGROUND and changing the “white balance setting to fluorescent : notice how what looks bright and orangey to lumi in person sill turns so bluey purpley…

 Lumi actually took HUNDREDS of pictures and MANY were pretty pictures but not one really showed the uhmm inner glowey orangery warning hazard fluorescence of her nails!  Perhaps it is true that love is not to be photographed?  Here is a collection of the best of 342 attempt at capturing the glory of fluorescent pink:

 After days spent getting the headache from staring at the screen and getting nothing Lumi came upon a blog about sinful colors 24/7. The brilliant lady over there said, “This color is so hot my camera didn’t want to focus on it”  this all made sense with what Lumi had just so recently learned about fluorescence and their glowing and made her think this might be a camera issue…and partly? it is.  There is alot of stuff about % of gray card, and RBG, JPG, RAW that technically perfectionist photographers gab about…and this time it MAY MAY be true that without different equipment capturing this true color is actually impossible.  Lumi doesn’t completely give to that though, being a little more of the ansel adams, lay in a ditch, and “wait for it”, school of photography!  There are also those that say, ‘just get a picture and then photoshop it to look like what you saw’, and while Lumi agrees that photoshop can create great works of art, she draws the line at them being used as some sort of journalistic reporting of what was seen.  This may be purely a snobbish photography purist delusion but for the time being lumi is sticking to it. Enough of that, so here we are and STILL, this auntie feels she hasn’t captured the true essence of hot pink which is just…an AMAZING physical sensation.  And according to these peeps, a psychological one too!  Do yourself a HUGE favor and get something hot pink into your life – starting with sinful color 24/7!!  And please, if you get an great pics of fluorescent pink send them our way!  Or any fluorescent pink anything really!  Lumi has decided it may very well be her calling to archive colors in person, since it seems accuracy cannot as yet be displayed fully with our current imaging technology!! The fact that we can’t yet is very interesting considering that it seems fluorescent dye technology itself seems to have been blooming in world war II and began to be used long before that in the medical and scientific worlds.  GAH!  We have Android phones but still the caveman printers and cameras…please children go into technology! Thankfully, this year you may get super lucky and see some really fluorescent pinks in person, as totally unbeknownst to lumi at the time of incepting this blog, the Spring 2011 runways went poodles over pink!

Pink Tartan’s spring pink:

One of Lumi’s favorite singrestresses Marina will apparently be sporting the pink of many names during the Max Factor campaign:

Armani Spring fluorescent pink:

Christoper Kane:

                                        jil sander also incorporated hot pink

as well as many others! Lumi is glad that the whole family of vibrant pinks are in th air this year and will be keeping a particular look out for that near and dear to her heart day-glow fluorescent jem eat your heart out pink.  If you or anyone you know finds some – take a picture or better yet send it to us! In the meantime lumi is thinking fluorescent paint? Oh yes…

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Lumi extras: Fun fact: Fluorescent colors were added to the crayola library in 1972! For the historical info on “shocking pink” and its baby momma and her beautiful clothes the pink posse in india sports on of the hot pink variants while they do their superhero work Did you even know there was such a thing as pink diamonds??lady explains colors in a great accent guys helpful video about neon lights and the colors they emit what neon color are you quiz(not for the shy of pop teen culture)