Giant Cannas (c) by Kirk Jordan
All pics, early September 2007, from a plot on the North East corner of the Arkansas State Capitol.
Natural light and electronic flash.
About the title. Some of you may wonder why "under a blood red sky" - as the sky here looks pretty blue - or grey.
Turns out, that the Canna flower excels at taking red that is hidden in the "transparent" light falling on our planet, and cutting it out of spectrum. As such, the Canna has a red-repelling characteristic--which we call "red ."
The thought gets really big when you think of what it means when somebody throws a red-reflecting ball. The ball, as it flies through the air, continually intersects and weeds out red that it is hidden in the "unseen" spectrum. (I say unseen, because if there were no things which intersected the light... be they air molecules or buildings ...the light would blaze through space "unseen.") Should the ball (or Canna flower) ever intersect a patch of sky with no red present in the spectrum, it could not weed it out, and bounce it back at us. (So... should you ever subject a Canna flower to pure green light, it would not find any red light to reflect, and would appear to the eye as black.)
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I hope, in the next few days, to share some pictures from what has been a powerful week in Arkansas. Over the last few days, thousands of people have gathered in Little Rock, to commemorate the actions of the "Little Rock Nine" - Nine African American students who braved hostile crowds in 1957 to integrate Central High. It has been a week deep in reflection for a city as we acknowledge our troubled past, and consider the many ways we have grown.
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The Mighty Works Project exists to test the red and yellow receptors in your retina.
