
Rejected soda cans crushed into a brick for recycling. Nikon D700/50mm, 1/60s, f/3.2, ISO 800, EV +0.3.
During a lunch break at work, I wandered around the plant and came upon a brick of metal cans from rejected sodas ready to be sent to the recycling facility. In the past, I would have not given the brick a second glance. However, remembering my goal to work on seeing photographic opportunities, I went over to the brick (pictured below) and found various compositions using recognizable brands.
The photo I selected for my first post on the Art of Seeing is anchored by Pepsi and Mountain Dew cans floating on a sea of mangled metal. Taking the photo using the Nifty Fifty, Nikon 50mm f/1.8D lens, allowed a shallow depth of field to separate the cans from very busy back and foregrounds. I processed the photo in Aperture 3 by first applying the Toy Camera preset to saturate the colors and add a vignette. I recovered all the highlights using the Recovery slider which brought out the metallic texture.

A brick of metal soda cans ready to be recycled.
Cool! I’d like to get my hands on that brick for a photo session!
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What a cool find and opportunity to do something different! I really like the first shot.
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Oh my, when I saw the title of this post on Twitter, I thought maybe something bad had happened with your cruise! LOL!
Funky pictures!
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‘Rejected and Crushed’ – the only way Pepsi products should be! HA! Kidding! 😉
Nice top photo…that pop of green from the Mountain Dew is fantastic!
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Way to spot opportunity, Scott! There’s a different way of looking at pretty much everything, isn’t there!
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Excellent not to let this opportunity go by unnoticed! I think there are great photos in just about any unusual or colorful or odd thing. Just takes a little looking.
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Modern art on recycling. A great find and capture, Scott.
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Well, that is way cool and colorful. I agree with isathreadsoflife’s comment. 🙂
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I like the vibrant colors, the 50mm lens creates a nice shallow depth of field. It’s probably not as scary looking to carry around also.
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