Winter Pictures in Color

The only thing winter photos have in common is that they were all shot in winter. Every winter scene is unique and full of memories because so many viewers have experienced winter for themselves.

In harsher climates, winter sustains gray skies and white, snowy terrain. For those who like to take pictures, however, it's a season of opportunity, for the world transforms into something unique during the winter months.

Anyone can walk outside on a cold day and feel a resigned bitterness toward the winter weather. Day after day of cold and dark can set a tone of bleakness that stretches from start of winter to finish. Many people choose to ignore it or put it out of their minds.

They walk outside on that same cold day, perhaps about to get into their car to go to work, and then they hear it - the crystal clear sound of rushing water. Everything else is frozen, yet there's the sound, unmistakable.

A drainage ditch cuts through the white snow and empties into a pond near the base of the driveway. A few faint morning rays of sunlight hit the flowing water and the pond causing both to shimmer and dance.

Anyone can go get their camera and take a picture of winter, or at least stop and look, but it's easy to overlook the things right in front of us, especially when the clouds press in for weeks and the heavens drop ice and snow on everything and everyone below.

Just because it's winter doesn't mean that people have to stop doing what they do. The grim, gray that hovers over everything seems to forewarn of more winter weather to come. But, for now, the streets are clear and business goes on as usual.

A busy morning intersection is full of people driving through winter, on their way to the barbecues and swimming pools of their subconscious thought, bent on making it through the gray days to the spring and summer beyond.

Perhaps even later that same day, the clouds completely disappear and the sky turns an icy blue. The air is so cold that it turns the sky an incredible azure, in contrast to the drab whites, greens, and browns of the frozen earth.

In early evening, when anyone grabs their camera and points it at a tiny yellow moon in the bright blue sky, the grays of winter melt away, if only for a moment.

Anyone can see that winter is colored by more than just white and gray. Winter pictures are portraits of change, of time frozen by nature, before it lets color burst back into the world.

Still, anyone can step outside when an elusive sun sets on the winter horizon. They'll see the world turned yellow, and, for just a few moments before the night cold slips in, the hue of the scenery has changed again, and the person taking the picture is warmed by winter.