In Colorado, at this time of year, the weather toys with us. Some days we’re expecting inches of snow and others it’s warm enough for shorts. It’s too early to plant anything but it feels like spring, even though not much is blooming. I lovingly refer to this phase as “Brown Season” because I’m itching to take my camera out shooting, but there’s not much available to provide the pops of color that I tend to seek out.

At first glance, everything around me looks about the same until I really start to take notice of the varying shades of tan and cream. We can get a bit more creative and call them by their paint sample names: burnt umber, khaki or maybe even sable.

Whatever you want to call them, the subtle shade changes make for more variety than I expected when I took my camera out for a walk the other afternoon. It had a been awhile since I dusted off the lens and charged the battery. It felt nice to be walking and taking notice of the in between phase of the seasons. I set out to capture an image that I had seen on my drive into the neighborhood. The red winged blackbirds like to take up residence in a stand of reeds that lines the road. The dark black feathers against the sea of beige makes for an interesting contrast.

Even though I captured an image that was similar to what I imagined, I still wasn’t quite ready to call it quits and I continued to walk along the edge of the reeds. I heard a rustle in the distant stalks and turned my camera just in time to capture this image of the coyote that must have been napping nearby.

It’s varying shades of brown fur blended in perfectly with this mid-season color scheme. It had no interest in me and bounded away without a second glance to leave me in peace as I continued my photo stroll.

I’ve determined that I actually quite like Brown Season. By purposely looking for beauty amongst the sameness, I found that I stretched my creativity a little bit more.

Seeing beyond brown – Angie