I have noticed the perspective reality of color most when I look at hair, fur, or feathers. My dog and my horse are perhaps the best canvasses for light play to tweak their color schemes, especially my horse, Beau, a mild mannered chestnut gelding whose coat looks looks radically different from one lighting to the next.
Chestnut refers to horses with light brown coats with a red/orange hue. In the sunlight my horse’s fur can take on either a reddish orange tint, a golden halo, or, if I’m lucky enough to catch him in just the right lighting at just the right angle: both. Some of my favorite pictures of Beau are of him during an Autumn Sunset. His fur was turned amber and tinged with gold, his white stripe shining like a band of light. Other days, with more diffused lighting, he just looks brown. with vague hints of red. It takes direct sunlight to bring out his yellow tones.
In addition to the colors I can see in his main coat, the little snip of white on his nose plays with the light quite a bit. When it isn’t covered in grass stains or mud I can see reflections of blue and pink on the shiny white hairs, giving Beau’s nose an opalescent quality that really heightens the visual texture of the fur where it is fine and silky.
-Alana Radkevich (February 20th, 2023)