in white or color

I've been doing a lot of photo editing lately. Not the type involving chemicals, red lights, and glow in the dark timers... the type I used to enter 12 hour meditative trances doing in college, the type I really love. But rather the type I used to shun, the type that involves a chair, a mouse, and my laptop; movement of the wrist, and rubbing of the eyes.
It's been over six months since I left India. And though I posted over a thousand pictures to share with family and friends, I never did anything else with them. Never cleaned them up, sorted through them...
And these past few days I've been inspired to continue, and not by the end product - I don't yet know what it'll be - but by the images and how they touch me. The moments I've captured. And I've realized it's time to start sharing. My work will never speak to anyone if I keep it hidden.
During this blurry-eye inducing endeavour I noticed something interesting. The color white is practically non-existent in nature. Just about the only time a non-synthetic white appears in my photographs is when I've overexposed the sky and it emits a blinding white light - a technical error. Yet I look around and I'm surrounded by white. My computer screen, the Poland Springs bottle cap, the coiled "creative" adapter, the paycheck I have yet to cash, the tissue poking out from the box, the Dr. Fischer moisturizer tube, the plastic bag in my trash... it's everywhere.
We seem to bleach everything to get this "pure" color. Our bread, our rice, our paper... We seem to use white as a base on which to splash color, we seem to think it's about the only suitable "color" to put others on. Yet in nature the abundance of colors create a visual harmony. The blue sky, the green plants, the brown earth, fruits, vegetables, flowers, animals... color is everywhere. And where we do find a shade of white - in seashells, mushrooms, animals (doves, swans, lambs, etc) - it's so spectacular - so different - that we awe at it.