In search of color in a drab city

Try as I may, I can't find much color in Provo. If I were to apply the "what are the colors of your city?" question to Provo, I would have to say beige and brick red. And the ratio is depressingly weighted in favor of the beige—not the beautiful Paris stone kind of beige, but a sort of sickly fleshy color you might associate with a Band-Aid. Nevertheless, I brought my camera in my car today and kept my eye out for color as I drove around town.

I think the pervasive drabness comes from laziness, as if city planners and architects are content to let the impressive mountains handle 100% of the aesthetic appeal. If I were a nature photographer, Utah would be a dream. May in some future "monthly special" I will have to force myself to tackle the nature and landscape genre, but for today, I just wanted to find some color in the city. Here are two of my finds:

The red door on this building stuck out like a sore thumb amid all of the neutrals. The shadows from telephone lines overhead caught my attention as well. So I parked my car, waited a minute or two, and then snapped a picture of this bicyclist zooming by. Her green shirt helped balance the red and picked up the green on the door frame.

I drove by a food bank and noticed that about half of the crates had been painted orange (my favorite color). I did a u-turn, drove into the parking lot, and took a few abstract photos of the crates. I wasn't trying to "say" anything with this photo (if I had wanted to take on social issues, I could have turned around and focused on the people at the food bank). For me, the appeal is purely from color, texture, and bold lines.