When Ailsa sent out her “Purple” Photo Challenge, I started pondering colors in general and this mixture of red and blue that we call purple in particular.
Recently, I wore what I considered a green blouse and a friend commented on how she liked my “blue” shirt. I wondered whether she was colorblind but when I looked more closely at my blouse, I realized (for the first time) that the green contained dots of blue. While my eyes chose to see the green as predominant, my friend focused on the blue.
This was quite an eye opener. How do we know what others see and what they envision when we mention a particular color (or anything else for that matter)?
Throw in the gender gap in differentiating between nuances of colors and labeling them, you can begin to see how complicated this color thing is. Seriously, how many guys who are not artists or interior designers will use the color word “mauve” or “chartreuse?”
To get some more clarity, I went to a paint store and collected a large number of “purple” color samples.
I found a wide spectrum of purplish shades, from a more pinkish magenta (think “Plum Burst,” “Sonic Plum”), to a more reddish plum (“Plum Good”), to true true purple (“Purple Royalty, “Byzantine Purple”), to lavender or periwinkle shades (“Purple Gala, “Imperial Plum,” “Grape Parfait”) all the way into dark indigo blue (“Indigo Cloth,” “Indigo Streamer”, and “Nightshift”). Can you imagine being paid to come up with names for hundreds of color shades?
When I scanned my color samples, my scanner picked up the blue and purplish shades but for some reason couldn’t pick up the more reddish (magenta, plum) shades. Strange…
In looking through my photo archives, I selected a few purple shades that are leaning more towards the magenta/pink spectrum:
And then a few stretching more into the lavender/periwinkle shades:
The following pictures contain what I consider “true” purple, but your eyes may see it differently.
I didn’t quite know what to call the purplish neck of this vulture, though:
vulture on fencepost
What do you think?
One of my favorite shades of purple, unapologetically, comes in the shape of a rainbow.
The Beauty Along the Road 
Awesome! I love the vulture. One day when driving in NW Oklahoma I saw 13 turkey vultures (like the one in the photo) sitting on fence posts—one per post. I later learned that they are very social creatures who always feed together and after a big feed they sit around in groups letting things digest. It is very common to see them sitting together in low trees or shrubs or as I did on fence posts.
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I am both attracted to and repulsed by these cadaver eating birds. But I have a series of pictures, will do some research, and then write a post about them, to get them out of my system 🙂 I love seeing several of them sitting on their own post along a fenceline. They look like soldier lookouts!
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Absolutely gorgeous! You have an eye for beauty in everything you see!
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Thank you, A., it’s my vision and my quest…
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We used to call those birds John Crow when I was young..So odd seeing one again.
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Where was that? I have never heard them referred to like that…
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I love the “single poppy with purple center”
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Magnificent rainbow shot, Annette. You really found some great purple images for the challenge. I think the Iris is my favourite. 🙂
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Thanks, Sylvia. I am in love with iris, the darker the purple, the better 🙂
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Your post made me smile as I recalled a colour somewhere between blue and green that I see as green but my husband and sons see as blue! I love all the different purples of Summer flowers – wild ones and garden varieties – purples with greens provide a beautiful contrast of colours I think.
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That’s funny, isn’t it, the way we see colors differently. I love all colors in nature, except perhaps the greenish tint in tornado clouds…
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