Orange ball in the snow
Terri Webster Schrandt

Sunday Stills Monthly Color Challenge: A #Whiter Shade of Pale

Hello readers! I hope your new year is off to a great start. We are still in travel mode, finishing our stay in San Diego. We arrived in Arizona in time for Christmas and New Year’s and enjoyed plenty of fun and family in desert style.

dark brown dog on white rocks
Brodie the Mountain Goat

January 2025 brings another set of monthly color challenges to my Sunday Stills photo challenge feature. When I decided to use white as January’s inspiration color, I thought I could share a few snow scenes. However, Eastern Washington had so little snow at the lower elevations before we left before Christmas. But a smattering of snow fell mid-December, as pictured here.

Orange ball in the snow
Brodie’s abandoned ball

“White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black.” ~ Unknown

Scenes Along the Road

I caught this cloudy scene during the Idaho part of our road trip south.

white clouds roll in
Western Idaho

I captured this outdoor store’s public art at our second night’s stop in Beaver, Utah. Who’s watching whom?

Public art white mountain goats

You will also notice most of my images show geometric shapes for Becky B’s squares challenge.

Desert White

Despite missing the snow back home (yes, I really do), I discovered the Arizona desert has plenty of white scenes and objects if you know where to look.

Around the area, new homes are being built in my brother’s new neighborhood. These white and peach-colored stones were found near this home, which is coincidentally constructed on Quartz Court.

construction on white house
white and rose quartz

“Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetic flowers. They lengthened and spread, added plane to plane in awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even stones – maybe only the stones – understood.” ~ Annie Dillard

Then there’s the fountain from which Fountain Hills gets its name…

Fountain Hills
Desert Moon

…with an evening topped off with last year’s full desert moon.

Within the Sonoran Desert, evidence of resilience is everywhere, from the native plants and wildlife that inhabit its 100,000 square miles.

Desert Broom Bush
Desert Broom Bush for Cee
Mexican Bobcat
Bobcat seen from the window

“Resilience is about overcoming the unexpected. Sustainability is about survival. The goal of resilience is to thrive.” ~ Jamais Cascio

I also believe it takes human resilience to live in the desert, in terms of extreme heat and other weather conditions. During the 2020 pandemic, my family members made sweeping changes in their homes and real estate by selling, buying, refinancing, or moving out of state. Where there was no family in Arizona, now there are many.

Can’t Miss Tourist Spots in San Diego

With several friends and family members also living in San Diego, we took the easy 6-hour drive from Scottsdale to visit for two weeks. This past week was sunny and warm (compared to last January’s torrential rains), driven mainly by Santa Ana winds that have decimated homes to the north in the Los Angeles area. Despite the winds, we visited some of San Diego’s popular tourist spots.

California Tower Balboa Park
California Tower Balboa Park
San Diego's Old Town
San Diego’s Old Town
Beach Bike Touring San Diego
Mission Beach, San Diego

Chollas Lake Park is close to my daughter’s home. It’s a great place to walk a dog, picnic, and hike nearby trails. Linda, these are for you!

White egret and seagull
White Egret shares rocks with a seagull and 5 turtles.
blue heron and seagulls
Blue Heron’s not impressed with seagull’s landing

“The world is like a little marsh filled with mint and white hawthorn.” ~ Mary MacLane

Soon, we drive back to the Scottsdale area of Arizona for two more weeks of sunshine.

flower border

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. Please use your own original images, whether new or from your archives.

  • 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.

Sharing for Becky B’s Geometric January, Cee’s Flower of the Day, Johnbo’s Cellpic Sunday, Lens-Artists: Resilience, and Natalie’s Public Art Challenge

“The color white is a blank canvas, just waiting to be written on.” ~ Chantal Larocque

White dog

I can’t wait to see how you interpret WHITE’s various shades and textures over the next two weeks! Join me again on January 26th for the final two-week challenge, Feed the Birds. Please visit my Sunday Stills page for the 2025 schedule.

Creativity is encouraged, so if you participate in the photo challenges, please share your own photographs (old or new), poems, original short stories, and/or music inspired by the theme.

All posts are copyrighted on this blog. Please do not repost or reblog.

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139 comments

  2. Terri,

    I’m late to the party again, but we’ve been busting our hump to get across the country ahead of the winter storms. We left Tennessee a day early to avoid the white stuff that fell on our little hose on the day we planned to depart. The picture here was sent to me by a neighbor. Great post–I LOVE the Bobcat picture. Have a great week, I’ll catch up soon! Joe

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  11. Nice about colours – white! Loved the mural, the desert moon and the bobcat especially. I always wanted to see a “lodjur” as we say in Swedish – but they are shy and not easily spotted here.

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  21. Would you believe that Toby and Austin have the same ball as Brodie? They have about four of them as Austin keeps losing them on the beach!

    I love the fountain photo. I could make out the rainbow colours it was producing. That’s a great capture, Terri.

    I’m not a fan of the desert, but I can see why many people find it appealing. It would be way too hot for me, but I rather like seeing cactus plants

    I hope you have enjoyed your trip and that you get more snow. We had a lot of it in early January, but it’s all gone now. The dogs (and I) loved it.

    I shared this post on BlueSky. It’s great to see you have the BlueSky sharing button on your blog.

    Enjoy the rest of your week.

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    • Thank you, Hugh! Yes I would believe your pups have those chuckit balls. Cheap on Amazon! We’re heading back to the Scottsdale area today. The temps are strangely cool there again. As long as it’s sunny, I’m happy! It took me a minute to get the Bluesky app on my phone, but I got it to work. I’m very happy with it so far, and have found many bloggers there. Nice community and thanks for posting about it.

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  22. Look at you with all these likes. I’m so slow getting here, but it’s been a busy week. The prickly cactus silhouetted against the moon might be my favorite – artistically-wise. But these are all great photos, Terri. The fur babies are sure cute, and you got a great rainbow on the Fountain Hills fountain. The bobcat is another favorite. He looks way too close for comfort! 🙂 xxx Have a great rest of your trip. Miss you!

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  25. Hi Terri
    The colour white lets us associate snow. And so we are off to Winter Wonderland tomorrow. Unfortunately, it’s too warm here, on the coast of North Norfolk. So we’ll go North to the Scottish Highlands, the Cairn Gorms.
    Interesting pictures showing the colour white. We didn’t expect these motives – but that’s great 👍👍
    About twenty years ago, Kb wrote a book about the colour white that got many editions.
    All the best
    The Fab Four Of Cley
    🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

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  30. Wow! Such stunning photos, Terri. You should have come to Atlanta since we have plenty of snow here. The neighborhood kids built a snowman and it is still standing. ☃️

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  37. Loads of great photos in your offerings, Terri. I especially love that moon shot! My offering is as you would expect; square and white.
    We recently played 20 questions with our grandkids, and the 7 year almost stumped us with a “snowflake”!

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  46. Hi Terri, your white shots are so varied and I can’t believe the difference in climate from where you live, what would the daily temp be in Arizona for instance? The desert moon is well captured and I just love seeing travel photos like you’ve shared as it shows me a different world that I may never get to visit! Thanks for the challenge, here’s my post:

    https://debs-world.com/2025/01/12/white-sails-and-sandy-beaches-sundaystills/

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  53. I’m glad you caught a thin blanket of snow in mid-December, Terri. Your desert moon photo is beautiful. I haven’t taken moon photos for many years. We discovered when we painted the interior of our house there are 150 shades of white paint.

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  55. Terri, I’m glad you found a white Egret, a Seagull and some turtles sharing space on the logs – funny as to the turtles because my post today I purposely didn’t include the sunning turtles and shifted them to Wednesday after saying “what, no turtles?” 🙂 This does look like a scene I would capture. My little fountain in today’s post pales in comparison to this huge one. I like your full moon shot from last year and the Bobcat – wow! Well, I am envious of your warm weather getaway … we are out of the Deep Freeze for a couple of days but are paying for it with four inches of snow from Friday night. My post doesn’t publish until 5:45 today but I linked to this post as I usually do. I am behind in French and it’s Sunday, so I am going to do another lesson and some practice.

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    • Thank you Linda! Chollas Lake is a San Diego parks district facility close to my daughter’s house. I hit the bonanza with images. I had to link to yours just for fun.
      I finished section 1 of Spanish and went back to German for now. It’s cold and foggy back home, so I’m soaking in as much sunshine here in San Diego. Stay warm!

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      • It’s looks like my kind of place Terri.

        I won’t do two lessons back-to-back again … brain strain! I would do that too – enjoy the sun, just check in and go. I’m a long way from doing that. 🙂

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  57. Love this kind of noncolor. Especially in the moon, the desert quartz and that bush with the frothy, off white blooms. We have those here. The rock formations around the pool are so attractive. Would like to have something similar around our pool. Pip is a precious accessory!! This color reminds me of vanilla bean ice cream. Will be adding it to the list of things I’m looking for in January.

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  58. That ‘on the road’ shot of Western Idaho is lovely, Terri. I’m sure some of those California people whose homes were wiped out by fire would have welcomed some snow. What a topsy turvy world this is. Safe journey home!

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  59. A great idea for the New Year’s challenge Terri, and some wonderful images to highlight the many shades and occurrences of white! The bobcat is wonderful and that full moon image is exquisite. Love how you framed it with the Cacti. Should send it into their chamber of commerce as they probably have a calendar with photos! As for me, a few whites in this week’s post, including our clouds over the ocean and a foggy palmetto landscape. Readers can catch it here https://travelsandtrifles.wordpress.com/2025/01/11/lens-artists-challenge-331-resilience/

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  63. Love your photos, Terri. Especially, the one of the egret and the cute little dog. The trip sounds fun. I suppose getting away from the snow for a while must be nice. Enjoy!
    I’ll share my post soon. 💕

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  66. It looks like you’re having a wonderful trip, Terri. What a great assortment of whites! I love the wall art, it’s so beautiful. The fountain is impressive and that moon shot! Fabulous! I’m glad you were behind glass to photograph the bobcat lol it doesn’t look too friendly. The last pic is so cute 😍

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    • Thank you, Anne! I’m relieved to read this…it took a minute to come up with the theme of resilience (an excellent one by the way) in my existing post. Having spent time in the desert, even the plants have ways to protect themselves with spines and hidden sharpies!

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