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A drab Saturday didn’t have much to offer but the red maples coming into leaf added colour to the grey landscape.
It’s a rather pleasing blend – for me.
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What do colour choices say about us?
Psychology Today offers a guideline, but I think such things put us in boxes and I believe that modern life has become infinitely more complicated.
There are so many more variables now.
So many more options and combinations.
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To test my theory, I asked Grant to name his favourite colour.
“It depends.” he said.
Life just isn’t that simple anymore.
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For me, the content of an image is equally important.
Empty roads disappearing into the distance always demand to be photographed!
Perhaps I’m searching for an escape route?
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Maybe I’m looking for the way “home”?
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Those few leaves clinging on from last year appeal to me.
A reluctance to let go?
Or a holding on to hope?
It seems to me that you can write your own diagnosis.
Psychology is a useful and fascinating science, but it is based on opinions and it can be manipulated.
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Psychology was one of my college subjects and in due course, I was required to write a term paper which had to do with the interpretation of a piece of classical music.
While my opinion may have coincided with the professor’s, I clearly remember writing what I thought he would approve.
You could call it a “cop-out”, but good grades were important.
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Very many years later, I was obliged to take an evaluation test and at the time I was angry. Not unusual in those days.
Reading the questions, I deliberately selected answers that I knew would send up flags, to make a statement, I suppose.
But I could just as easily have chosen different answers, which I would have, in a different mood.
Psychology is subjective.
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Another image that appeals to me: lone trees.
Apparently I am not alone in this.
What does it say to you?
Sole survivor? Loner? Out-stander?
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Alternate angle.
Different image altogether.
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My father was a professional photographer who adhered to the standards he was taught and I used to take the sorts of pictures I thought would please him.
Now I take what I like.
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Very early in life I decided rules were meant to be broken, or at the very least tested!
After all – who makes rules?
What makes them right and everyone else wrong?
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Not that I ever really broke the rules. Just maybe interpreted them a bit differently.
And I never committed a crime. I’m the sort of person who would be arrested on the spot.
Just being around a policeman makes me feel guilty.
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While we were out on Saturday, we drove by Salem where one of many protests was getting started.
The police were much in evidence. Maybe it was my imagination that made them seem threatening.
Government officials in uniform have always had that effect on me.
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Railway lines and lines in general appeal to me.
Intersecting lines…
…but certain combinations I can’t even look at.
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Busy patterns. I can’t offer you one because – I can’t look at them!
Hounds-tooth, maybe. That sort of thing.
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Maybe that relates to my dislike of anything complicated or convoluted.
Give me simplicity and clear boundaries!
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Maybe it’s why I so much prefer other creatures.
(Another osprey near a different nest.)
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“Cauliflower option suits me fine!”
Co-operation, you see.
I also have a fondness for ‘lonely trees’. I thought about colours, and most of my clothes are either black or red. But I would never paint anything in those colours, so I have to settle on something like Duck Egg Blue. It’s a very calming colour.
Best wishes, Pete.
Thank you, Carolyn, for your philosophical musing! I love lonely trees because you cannot see their beauty in a crowd. Rules have to exist in an otherwise chaotic world. What about those brought by Moses, all make sense; you should not kill, respect your parent…and others.
Colours depend on where they are used; clothes, walls in our homes, flowers in the garden…
Joanna
I love the idea of deliberately selecting answers that would send up red flags (there – I’ve coloured in your flags!)
We often give an opinion or answer that we think is the desired one. I suppose it is human nature not to wish to rock the boat.
I also like to see a long winding road in front of us when we drive (I like your idea of a “searching for an escape route” 😉). And like you (and some of your other friends here in the comments), I also like the sight of a “lonely tree” … somehow, I always feel obliged to take photos of those trees.