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The popularity of “Mad Men” should have convinced you that the Sirk era of mod-con stylishness has lines that just don’t die. Insofar that this era brought into being the modern motifs of advertising message and visual style before weighing price, quality, or utility, the congruence of photography art and late 1950″s and early 1960′s design and fashion makes excellent subject matter.

This shot was a great one in the making but the context and environment brought me  low. Anachronism tells.  I had intended to crop the mint green Thunderbird sides and undercarriage, capturing the atmosphere of kitsch. But leaving just the intersection of the shipping container ribbing intersecting with the stylish design of the classic Thunderbird convertible “clipped” the car.  This idea came to a crashing halt when it came to actually cutting down the T-bird, (I couldn’t do it).

This mint color caught my eye, and with camera in hand I snapped a few shots around seven a.m. Sunday morning. I had just been working with the micro focus setting, capturing various flowers. After the sun comes out, the greenery around most roses and buds is actually lighter than the petals, throwing flowers into relief. This shifts focus to the leaves not the flower.

This causes a conflict when setting lenses. The detail (museum) setting picks up every detail, unfortunately this includes a dark sky and brighter background. The micro focus picked out every detail in some shots, reducing the image to a surgical glare of a right angle sobriety. Not every rose “blossoms” under such scrutiny, and composition straight on reduces the image to a red rose “mug shot”.

The “regular” setting worked OK, but robbed a lot of the definition detail I wanted. Plus, a tiny bug looked like a killer opportunity to get a micro shot, but my lens with all its zoom kept stuttering and leaving the bug as a tiny blur on the leaf. The rising sun kept turning the background leaves lighter, and I knew even blurring wouldn’t help.

But being on walkabout curried the ready camera, complete on a cold morning with fresh memory and an almost entirely clear 8 megabyte memory stick. When this sweet mint green classic restored Thunderbird rolled past I couldn’t believe my luck. The green color would just pop in the dim morning light, it’s under sunlight that pastels die away.

Look for color grabbing opportunities in your next photo foray, and be sure to package any period detail in plain or homogeneous background to heighten micro stock sales appeal.

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