Photo Challenge: White

The benefit of the Shutterboo color photo challenge weeks is that they are very concrete. White. Yes, I understand. The hard part, at least this week, is to make it feel interesting and different.

It was hard to find something that focused primarily on white. So often, white is the background color, used to offset something bold and vibrant. And, for the first time in nearly two months, all the snow melted this past weekend! A surefire white picture disappeared. (Although I wasn't too sorry about that.)

Never fear, though. On Sunday evening, we had an ice storm. By Monday morning, everything was covered in a thin, glistening layer of ice. It looked amazing. Even better (in terms of visual appeal, at least), it snowed again Monday night, and Tuesday dawned bright and sunny. So on my drive to work Tuesday, I was surrounded by a winter wonderland. The fresh white snow was reflected by the branches of every tree and bush. The amount of shine and light refraction was awe-inspiring. Everything was covered in a million tiny rainbows.

So of course, it would be nice to get a picture of the unique ice storm. Keith had the same idea:


The only problem is that any picture with more than a minute amount of another color, to me at least, ends up not saying "white." The white becomes background noise to the other color. In this case, the black of the branches stands out just as much as the white.

So instead, Keith chose a more neutral, definitely white-focused picture:


I like that there are blue overtones, and that there's still a focal point with the light and the footprints. So there is some depth to it, but not enough to take the focus away from all the white. The vast whiteness that we've been living in for several months, and that will probably be with us for another month, if not more ....