Friday, November 28, 2014

Colorful world in photography: White.

“The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself”. (Lao Tzu)

The following words are synonymous with white and represent various shades of the color white: pearl, snow, paper, lily, cream, ivory, chalk, linen.


We can associate the color white in nature with snow, clouds, milk, chalk, paper, seashells, pearl, lilies, orchids, linen.


The color white arouses associations with abstract concepts with positive meaning (purity, innocence, goodness, heaven, sincerity, perfection, possibility) and with negative meaning (mourning – in eastern countries).

There are many set expressions with the word “white”: “white as snow” (if something/someone is as white as snow, they are perfect or honest), “pearly whites” (teeth), “whitelist” (in Internet terminology, a generic name for a list of e-mail addresses that is considered to be spam free), “white knight” (a hero who comes to the rescue; in business,  is a friendly investor).

Gilbert K. Chesterton wrote: “White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white”. And he was absolutely right.

I hope you liked my series of posts about colors in photography :)

No comments:

Post a Comment