Color gives viewers a sense of mood, place, and time of year. Artists like Eliot Porter use the special qualities of color to express feelings about a place.

Colors can show moods and emotions: "seeing red" means someone is angry; "feeling blue" means someone is sad.

Think about how you feel when looking at the colors in Porter's images.

Warm colors —  red,  orange,  yellow — seem to jump off the page. They remind us of warm things like fire or the sun.

Cool colors —  blue,  green,  purple — seem to go back in space. They remind us of cool things like grass, ice, and sky.

Color sometimes makes subjects easier to see and understand.

These are black-and-white versions of Porter's color images. First, look at the black-and-white image and answer the questions in your Activity Log.

Next, roll over each image; it will appear in color as Porter photographed it. Complete your Activity Log questions. Through this lesson, you will begin to see how color effects how we feel.

• What colors do you see? Are they mostly warm or cool or a combination of both?
  
  
• What does color tell you about the time of year?
  
  
• What does color tell you about the mood or feeling of the image?



• What does the color version provide that you don't find in the black-and-white version? Is the black-and-white version better? Why or why not?