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Colour,  Landscape,  Lens-Artists

Gallery: looking cool

August 26, 2024 / 70 Comments

For you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool, by making his world a little colder

Paul McCartney, Hey Jude

Why does ‘cool’ sound so good and ‘cold’ much less so? We admire someone for being cool (aka trendy or easy-going) but are put off by another’s coldness. And while we may welcome the cool of an evening after a hot summer’s day, only a few of us enjoy really cold weather.

When it comes to colours, while the hot shades of red, orange and yellow make a big splash, the cooler ones may be easier to live with as they evoke a sense of calm, serenity, and tranquillity. These are the colours of nature, the sea, the sky, grasslands and forests. Blue is associated with coolness and peace, and green with balance and freshness.

Some cool places

For this week’s Lens Artists challenge John asks us to share Cool Colours. I enjoy compiling a colour-themed gallery but to give this one focus I’ve chosen to pair two definitions of the word cool by narrowing my selection of cool colours to places that can also be described as cool. I’m using ‘cool’ here in the sense of temperature, rather than the colloquial meanings of ‘fashionable’ or simply ‘great’. If I were to go by those definitions I would be including some very hot places too! Indeed, as I find interest wherever we travel, almost any destination would find its way into that collection.

No, today I want to focus on places that were decidedly chilly but no less beautiful for that. They are all destinations that I’ve featured in previous posts, some numerous times. So I’ve kept these galleries fairly small and tried to include at least some shots you won’t have seen before.

Antarctica

While I would include myself among those who don’t enjoy cold weather, some places are so beautiful that it’s easy to ignore the cold! And in fact, to my surprise, the January temperatures we experienced visiting Antarctica were on a par with, and at times a little higher than, those in London at the same time! My feature photo was of course taken here.

Norway

I have visited Norway several times, in winter, spring and summer. The photos below were taken on two of those visits: a winter visit to Tromsø and the far north, and a more recent late spring visit to several places on the coastal route from Trondheim to Tromsø. With Tromsø lying above the Arctic Circle, on my first visit the sun only rose above the horizon on our last day, and on the second it never set! But even on that second trip the weather was most definitely chilly, with snow on the day we visited the Lofoten Islands.

Iceland

As with Norway, I have made both winter and spring visits to Iceland. I know I have shared photos from this stunning country many times before, but I can’t resist doing so again as it’s perfect for this theme.

Torres del Paine

This is another place you’ll have seen in previous posts, so I’ve tried to find some different shots this time around. And while it wasn’t exactly chilly during our visit, it was certainly ‘cool’ (as in ‘awesome’!) and the colours were definitely so.

I visited Antarctica in 2003, Norway in 2013 and 2023, Iceland in 2012 and 2018, and the Torres del Paine in 2016

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