Real Life Photo Negative

Imagine if you will (because I still try to keep my running time sacred and usually do not bring my phone along, so there's no picture to share), a photo negative. Where everything black shows up white and everything white shows up black.

I had the pleasure of viewing a larger than life photo negative in real life. Saturday morning I woke to a dusting of snow (yay! finally!!) and while running Calhoun at mid-day I noticed one of the coolest things I've seen in awhile in nature.

I was approaching a long flat stretch of path, the lake on my left and the sun shining from the same direction. Between the lake and the path is a row of trees. Trees that should have been casting a dark shadow on the path given the sun that was out. However, for a few split seconds, what I'm seeing appears to be an optical illusion.

The tree's shadows were a light white and all of the "empty" space around the tree's shadows, that should have been light, was actually dark. After a moment I realized all of the tree's "shadows" were made of snow that had not yet melted because the sun was being blocked by the trees. And all the space that should have been light was actually dark because it wasn't blocked by trees and therefor the sun had melted the snow...producing this photo negative effect.

I might just start carrying my phone in case this phenomenon happens to reappear! Sadly, on the next day's run the real life photo negative was no longer there.