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| Sunlight and dandelions |
There was something magical about sitting in my grandparents' living room and watching Tinkerbell dart across the television screen, turning a black and white image into "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" with a touch of her wand. Instead of eating at the kitchen table as we usually did, we had our chicken pot pies on TV trays, ready to watch the latest episode in living color. Later in the evening, Grandma might fix some popcorn on the stove and serve it in the brightly-colored metal bowls. (I always wanted the bright blue one.)
Grandpa Neelly didn't retreat to his recliner in the other room. He seemed just as anxious to see what Walt had for us on a Sunday night. (He was equally as enamored with Lassie and Rin Tin Tin.) I'm sure we watched those programs at home, too, but it was somehow different at Grandma's and Grandpa's house.
My natural inclination is to view things in "living color." I guess I'm still the little girl who first watched television on a black and white set in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Boy, were we lucky when we got that first color television set!
Even though Kansas was portrayed in "The Wizard of Oz" as black and white, I like my Sunflower State in full color. But the challenge this past week for Snapshot Kansas on Facebook was black and white images.(Today, there's a new challenge, but I'm still focused on black and white for now.)
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| Wheat on a dewy morning |
There is beauty in black and white, too. However, I must admit that I didn't like every photo I tried converted to the starkness of black and white.
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| A neighbor's cattle drive on horseback |
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| Moisture on white spring flowers |
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| A cross found in an old falling-down barn |
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| Sunlight on another old barn |
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| A lonely tree |
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| Cottonwood canopy - the road to the Rattlesnake Pasture |
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| An old Aermotor windmill |
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Most of my black and white images are from rural Kansas. But I also liked this image of the Keeper of the Plains in Wichita, one I took while on a morning walk during a Kansas Wheat conference there.
Maybe seeing things in black and white helps me "listen" in a new way.
