Winter Gray and White
Terri Webster Schrandt

Sunday Stills Monthly Color Challenge: Days of #Gray and #White

This is the first monthly color challenge for 2023. Combining the colors white and gray seemed fitting for this time of year.

For some reason, white and gray are colors I associate with winter in the northern hemisphere. But these colors appear in all seasons.

“Working in white makes people look into it. White is ethereal. There’s a purity to it, it makes things look elevated in a way. There’s a whole palette of white…” ~Jonathan Milne

For this combined color photo challenge, use both colors in your images, or use them separately with other colors, or alone.

“A gray day provides the best light.” ~Leonardo da Vinci

Winter’s White (and Gray) Flowers

Enjoy this gallery of white flowers–which one has gray in it?

Macro white blossom
Almond Blossom
Vibrant paperwhites
Vibrant paperwhites
Trailing African Daisies
Trailing African Daisies

Days of Gray and White

I knew full well when we decided to move to Northeastern Washington that there were four clearly defined seasons. Yep, that means snow all winter and dark, gray days. Bring it on, I say. Enjoy this gallery of past whites and grays.

White grass white snow
Spokane White Christmas
White Christmas 2020
Making Snow Tracks
white tailed deer grazing
Fitness Activity
snowshoeing
Snowshoe fake falling fun
snowy bough
Snowy Beauty

“Put variety in white.” ~Charles Webster Hawthorne, American painter, 1872-1930

Sky Views

I must share the white eye of the sky with this October full moon.

October Moon
October Moon

On my trip to San Diego in December, I made sure to get the window seat flying over California. I found it quite amazing to see Yosemite Valley from 10,000 feet and covered in winter’s white and gray blanket no less! The iconic peaks of the valley, Half Dome and El Capitan are visible in the lower right of the image

Yosemite Valley from 10K
Yosemite Valley from 10,000 feet

Flying back I wanted to sit on the West side of the plane to try to see the Sacramento Delta, but the impressive cloud deck obscured the view.

View Above the Cloud deck
Above the Cloud Deck

Which also means everything under it was a dull gray!

Foggy river reflection
Sacramento’s typical gray winter

A Light Illuminates the Gray

I’m super excited to announce my collaboration with Poetry Guru and Self-Published Author Colleen Chesebro and her popular Tanka Tuesday Challenge! Last December, she reached out and asked if I could contribute images to the challenge as inspiration for Tanka Tuesday.

Flattered and excited, I had no idea that my first image below would spark such beautiful and incredible poetry.

snow scene Tanka Tuesday
View of my house and property

As each blogger shares their work on their blog, they link back to my About Me page and I have enjoyed reading these all week! When folks wrote poems inspired by this view of my home, I was incredibly touched by their words. Somehow these lovely poems validated everything we worked so hard for in 2019-2020 to be able to move to Washington and enjoy our new home and lifestyle.

This one in particular, moved me to tears, by Tao Talk. This poem is published with her permission.

Dawn’s Blankets

Dawn’s pink and blue crystal blankets
Faux-warm, smiling crystal blankets
Quiet world stirs, begins anew
Our home hearth burns

Wind lost, aimless chimney smoke curls
Disperses in lightening sky
Dawn’s pink and blue crystal blankets
Our home hearth burns

Yesterday’s blizzard swept away
Awake, awed with morning’s pastel,
Sip hot coffee and give thanks while
Our home hearth burns

Here is Colleen’s lovely tanka:

“blue twilight descends

snow-light fades, shadows flourish

remains of the day

hearthstone warmth invites me home

where your memory lingers”

© Colleen M. Chesebro

And One More…

This image of Hans and I wearing our wedding white evokes the belly laugh theme for Marsha’s Wednesday Quotes coming this week!

We're Married
Something he said was funny! Image edited by TWSchrandt

Photo Challenges this Week

Each week I am inspired by my fellow bloggers’ photo challenges. I enjoy incorporating these into my Sunday Stills weekly themes.

Sunday Stills Photo Challenge Reminders

The Sunday Stills weekly-themed photo challenge is easy to join. You have all week to share and link your post.

  • Remember to title your blog post a little differently than mine.
  • Please create a new post for the theme or link a recent one.
  • Entries for this theme can be posted all week.
  • Tag your post “Sunday Stills.”
  • Don’t forget to create a pingback to this post so that other participants can read your post.
  • I also recommend adding your post’s URL to the comments.

This Week’s Featured Bloggers

Sunday Stills is a wonderful community of bloggers and photographers who desire to connect with one another. Below are this week’s links from bloggers who shared their white and gray photos. I add these all week as new links are posted.

I can’t wait to see how you interpret the colors of gray and white this week! Join me next week as we explore…Silence!

bitmoji plaid

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179 comments

  4. Beautiful gallery, Terri! My favorite photo is “Snowy Beauty”. That would make a great Christmas card image!
    Quick question… I was looking for your post that provides instructions on compressing your WordPress photos, but I couldn’t find it. Could you please reply with a link to that post? Thanks.

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  6. Beautiful photos, it is fun to see how gray and white are so prominent up North. It’s a treat to have the sun out to make the white look whiter and the grays change to a subtle blue. I do love the vivid blue skies that accentuate the grays and whites. That Trailing African Daisy is stunning, I’ve never seen one of those. I adore the wedding photo – your smile says it all. Your homestead photo sparked such beautiful words in those poems, so sweet!

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  10. What a stunning post and I LOVE white and gray! These colors figure prominently in my home’s interior. I love these blog collaborations. They remind me of why we started blogging—to connect and share our lives. I think I will start joining in this challenge. 🤍💙

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    • Poetry is a rabbit hole–I enjoy reading the various forms, but not writing it. I had taken a photography class a few years ago and we had a full moon, and the photographer who taught the class was gracious to show me the setting for capturing the moon with my then new camera! Many thanks!

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    • Thank you, Natalie! I had a lot more I could share but I like to keep the photos to a little bit of a minimum. In trying to find a white-based image for Marsha’s challenge a few days early, I remembered those wedding photos. So glad you liked it, Kim is a wonderful photographer!

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  21. Hi Terri, thanks for linking my post this week – I wouldn’t have thought about it but of course my white flower in its multiple variations was a fine fit! I just re-did several rooms in my home last year including my laundry room and office and yep, u guessed it, gray and white with a bit of beige to tie in with the rest of the house. I am very happy with the results. Loved the way you actually caught half-dome from the sky – amazing!! And what fun to have your new home be the subject for the poets – a lovely compliment.

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    • Although I didn’t have the right elements in time for LA, I was happy yours worked out. I’m sure your home is very restful and beachy, I dare say, Tina! I had no idea that collaborating for the Tanka Challenge would be so uplifting for me! Something unexpected for sure.

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  24. Lovely to see your images…and read your words. I once flew from Las Vegas to San Francisco (part of trip that is in my post) and marvelled at the snow on the mountains. Coming from Australia, very little snowy areas other than in winter/early spring. Now I know where Apple gets the names for all their systems…that’s why they are familiar to this apple user….We are going to have an around 30deg C few days here in our part of Australia (the east coast) and I am grateful no higher…summers here can be over the old fashioned century in F ….https://www.denysewhelan.com.au/denyse-blogs/trip-to-hawaii-white-grey-memories-sundaystills-6-2023/

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  25. I love that photo of the snow on the spruce (?) branch. It looks like cotton candy and I just want to eat it! Lol. And what a great photo for Colleen’s challenge. It’s more blue than gray and white, but I love that winter blue. And the poems are exquisite. No wonder you were moved. Great post, Terri.

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  26. Hi Terri, it’s so hot here at the moment that your snow shots were a perfect way to cool down! That moon shot is fabulous and the colour grey is perfect for you at this time of year.

    I did have some ideas for a post – our grey ghost gum trees, the grey skies of a storm, and a few others but grey just doesn’t suit my summer feelings at the moment! So I am sharing my grey pinecone shot on Instagram, from my early morning walk in the forest before the day got too hot and I retreat to the hammock under the trees.

    Thanks for the cool grey tones in your photos and well done on having your photos used in other blog challenges! I love the one of you laughing 🙂
    Hopefully this link works

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    • Thank you, Debbie! I’m glad my snow could virtually cool you off for a bit 🙂 I got to peek at your IG post–the white-washed pinecone is perfect. Our wedding day was memorable–my hubby and I were just talking about it a few minutes ago (now we’re getting ready for my daughter’s wedding in April)!

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  28. Lovely gallery Terri. I like the Yosemite Valley from 10,000 feet view and our Moon. Just a few from me this month Terri 🙂
    PS I have been on the ewsize mission since last week and have done a few every day but the “counter” on the media files doesn’t get any smaller….yet, which is disappointing but I am pushing on. Also deleting ones that I think are no longer needed. One day it will be posts as well 🙂

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  29. What a wonderful omen and sign that you are laughing so hard on your wedding day!! I have been telling my students when I sub to name the colors they see in a particular photograph. Especially photographs of water and snow. They always begin by saying blue for photos of water and white, of course, for snow. But then they look again. There’s green, there’s gray, pink. Your photographs always make viewers look again. There is always more. Like the droplets in the Snowy Beauty photo. And the soft gray shading on the Almond Blossom.

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    • Hi Leslie, thank you so much for your lovely comment! Both Hans and I laughed a lot during our wedding–our pastor was quite the funny guy! Thank for saying that my images make people look again–high praise indeed. Hope you are doing well!

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    • Thank you, Janis! Snowy Beauty is a good one and I’ve featured it a couple of other times. I bet you could easily pick out the Yosemite icons. There have been times when the conditions were just right when I have flown over and could make out Lembert Dome in Tuolumne Meadows!

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  33. Just finished my post. I’ve enjoyed a wonderful afternoon visiting your post and most of the links. Your grays are stunning. Yosemite Valley looks awesome from the air. You have such variety this week from fog to flowers. How did you get that pretty snow design? And was that really FAKE falling? It wouldn’t have been if I’d been trying it! I love the belly laugh of you and Hans. So cute!

    Lots of snow here today. It hasn’t started here yet. We’re not going anywhere. Here’s mine. http://alwayswrite.blog/2023/01/15/looking-back-at-prescott-in-grays-and-whites/

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  35. Oh and your airplane photo and words “Sacramento delta” reminded me the little history fact I just read/:

    “Delta Air Lines is named for the Mississippi Delta, the area it originally serviced in 1928.”

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      • Oh that is so interesting and I feel bad for southwest with recent challenges during the holidays
        When my friend got married in 2013 – her reception was at a country club in Denver and someone pointed to a table and said a bunch of southwest execs were members there and were having dinner –
        So funny how we remember the strangest things

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  38. I love all the wintry photos, Terri. But the one that shines out for me is the one of the moon.

    I’m glad you’re now experiencing four seasons where you live. I’d really miss not living four seasons every year, even though sometimes some of them merge into each other.

    You did good getting a window seat on the flight. It’s great seeing Yosemite Valley from so high up knowing that I have driven through it. It looks so small from your seat, but what a wonderful and huge place it is to visit.

    I’ll be joining in with Wordless Wednesday this week.

    Have a great week.

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    • Thank you, Hugh! I was so happy to learn how to manage my camera settings to capture those moon shots!

      Since the pandemic, we hadn’t traveled by air much, and rarely during winter, so seeing Yosemite at 10k feet was amazing. See you Wednesday!

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  43. Wow!
    The moon, Yosemite at 10,000 ft, and beautiful flowers. Loved this post. My contribution is an image of Edisto Beach surf from our November trip. I thought the white surf and grey sand/sky qualified for Sunday Stills (although not yet winter). Your White Christmas picture was nice as well. Snow is so quiet, and you can feel the quiet in the picture. Have a great week. Joe

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    • Thanks so much, Joe. Snow definitely muffles the ambient outside sounds, but so does the thick fog I remember in Sacramento. I will stick with the snow for now. Your image is lovely–perfect for white and gray color challenge!

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  49. Beautiful flowers Terri. Grey skies to me are depressing. I thrive in sunlight. So this quote: “A gray day provides the best light.” ~Leonardo da Vinci, I find difficult to agree with. 🙂 x

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    • Hi Bernie, if you are wanting to add to Tanka Tuesday, you create a new post and link to my about me page and to Colleen’s post. I had to disable comments to my About me page because of the incredible amount of spam.

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    • You would have to create a post, then embed the Instagram block into the post. Or you can share the Instagram link that was created when you shared the images in my posts comment section. Or…you can add those images to your WordPress media file then add the image link in the comments on my post. So many ways to confuse you 😉

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  61. I like your collection of photos in this post Terri – from Summer to Winter, lots of white. As for gray, yes, our sky seems to b perpetually gray and last week one of the meteorologist gave this factoid: January 10th in Michigan is the grayest day of the year; August 10th is the sunniest. I tucked that last date away to see if it turns out that way. I can’t imagine how they could pinpoint months ahead what day will be gray and/or sunny?

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