I once wrote an essay about brown (part of my series about colors). It maligns the color, however – actually things I personally associated with it – so I am not going to include it here. In fact, like in Nancy Merrill’s challenge A Photo a Week, I also associate brown with Thanksgiving. My first photo makes the connection clear. So here’s a photo essay celebrating the color brown!

I really have nothing against brown – I actually like it. It is a prominent color in nature

and our new house is brown (so was our old house).

Brown has many manifestations – dark brown, light brown, sienna, reddish brown, etc. There are browns that are grayish and browns that blend nicely with green, as in nature.


Many common things are brown:
Tree trunks can be brown.

Wood from trees is usually brown and is used to make many things.


Many rocks are brown. This rock has an ancient petroglyph carved by Native Americans that lived in New Mexico long ago.

Rock/stone has been used in many buildings since time immemorial such as Karnak and other limestone monuments of ancient Egypt.

Because of the prevalence of brown in nature, many animals are brown to conceal themselves from predators, such as this jackal resting in the grass in Tanzania.

Some of my favorite articles of clothing are brown, and brown goes with just about any other color. I wear this brown necklace with several outfits.

You won’t find brown on the color spectrum, however, because it is really a mixture of other colors. The colors provided by WordPress don’t include brown, so I am using what is called “burnt orange” as a substitute!