March 5

A Sunday pick-me-up:

 

Anatomy lesson:

Feet

Legs

Our gay celebrity guest (1925-1985): 
a tribute to Rock Hudson's glamorous gams

Sepia

Sometimes I select a photo that has been printed or produced in sepia tone (such as the fourth photo under the "legs" heading above), and I have received more than one inquiry about the term I use to label them. Sepia* is a reddish-brown hue named after the ink of cuttlefish, a cephalopod (a class of tentacled marine animals that includes the octopus and squid). Cephalopods have the ability to expel ink, and the ancient Greeks and Romans used cuttlefish ink for writing.

These days sepia tones are used mainly as an artistic technique in photography. The hue resembles the effect of aging in old photographs. Many photo graphics software programs and most digital cameras include a “sepia tone” option. The technique dates back to the late 1880s, when photographers were still experimenting with color printing and flexible plastic films. Late 19th-century efforts in photographic printing included adding ink from cuttlefish found in the English Channel to the chemical solutions used to print photographs. The effect, which is softer than black and white, was sometimes used in films, most notably in 1979's Stalker and the opening and closing segments of 1939's The Wizard of Oz (the Kansas sequences).

*How to pronounce “sepia”? Glad you asked: SEE-pee-uh.