The natural world will forever be our greatest source of color inspiration. Not a day or season goes by without being able to find a profound experience of color: After the white snow melts away taking with it the stark contrasts of bare tress and black shadows, the grass's green becomes richer each day, until one day. And as quickly as the first transformation happens, an opposite and equally powerful transition takes place. The green retreats, fading into shades of grey and making way for the falling white to come again.
In appreciation for these very colors I have selected, some of the world's richest, most powerful color experiences, that if given a chance to view in a non-RGB setting that opportunity should be grasped.
Red Lava
When this red-hot molten rock erupts from a serene black landscape of protruding mounds and mountains of volcanic formations a true humbling experience can be had when contemplating the substance before you and its impact on the formation of the very ground you stand upon and that fact that that ground is not a static platform but rather a living, evolving stage.
Read about lava's unique properties and find more color inspiration from the Big Island of Hawaii and other landscapes.
The Orange Australian Dust Storms
Why is the dust orange in the first place? Because there's so little vegetation. Southeastern Australian soil is composed of weathered ferric rocks. The iron makes the resulting clay minerals—like nontronite, saponite, and volkonsokite—orange-ish. This process is certainly not unique to the land Down Under. Many regions started out orange but eventually transitioned to brown or black as vegetation sprang up in the fertile clay and composted into dark organic matter. The climate around Sydney is too arid for trees and shrubs to proliferate, so the area retains its original hue. The lack of vegetation also explains the frequent dust storms. Clay is flaky, and there aren't many trees or roots to prevent it from sweeping across the plains. - keep reading at Slate.
The Yellow Desert Flowers
Mesembryanthemum clavatum flowers (Mesembs) in late Spring, creating carpets of colour in the semi-desert landscapes of the Northern Cape (Tanqua Karoo, October 2006, South Africa). - Photographer Martin_Heigan
Green Algae
Green algae is the most diverse group of algae, with more than 7000 species growing in a variety of habitats.
A few other organisms rely on green algae to conduct photosynthesis for them. The chloroplasts in euglenids and chlorarachniophytes were acquired from ingested green algae, and in the latter retain a vestigial nucleus (nucleomorph). Some species of green algae, particularly of genera Trebouxia and Pseudotrebouxia (Trebouxiophyceae), can be found in symbiotic associations with fungi to form lichens. In general the fungal species that partner in lichens cannot live on their own, while the algal species is often found living in nature without the fungus. - Wikipedia
Glacier Blue
A glacier is a mass accumulation of snow and ice. However, unlike snow, a glacier's color appears a deep, almost deep-sea-eerie blue. This is because, while white snow sits atop these massive giants, all the previous year's snow has been compressed into ice, and light acts differently in ice. When white sunlight hits a glacier, instead of being completely scattered, like with snow, it penetrates deep into the ice. The farther it goes the more red frequencies get absorbed due to an "overtone of infrared OH stretching mode of the water molecule." This is the same reason water appears blue. Why is Snow White
The Purple Aurora
The colors created by aurora are most commonly, green and red, but depending on the particles present in the clouds from the sun, say if there is nitrogen present, the color can range from low level reds to very high blues and violets.
Aurora originates from the sun. Large amounts of solar particles are thrown into space and travel for about two to three days at a rate of 300 to 1000 kilometers per second in order to reach earth's outer magnetic field. At this point, the clouds of particles are pulled towards the northern and southern magnetic poles. As they are being pulled towards the poles they are stopped by our atmosphere colliding with other present particles. The interaction of these particles causes what we know as aurora, the northern lights or aurora borleis in the northern hemisphere, and aurora australis or the southern polar lights in the southern hemisphere. Colors in Nature: Aurora
We (Intel and Nokia) purposefully set up MeeGo under the hospices of the Linux Foundation. So the MeeGo project gets technical contributions from both Intel and Nokia, but the project is ‘owned’ by the Linux Foundation itself.
