Bottle Rocket

How an Imaginative Photographer Created a Colorful Image 
 

- Barry Tanenbaum

DEPENDING ON HOW YOU LOOK AT IT, this photo took Sam Garcia an hour, or four years, to make.

Formerly a professional markets technical representative for Nikon, and an instructor for the Nikon School of Photography, Garcia’s travels across the country and around the world presented him with many room-service breakfast trays, from which he took the Tabasco and ketchup bottles that accompanied the meals.

At home he filled the little bottles with water, added food coloring, and put them on windowsills to bring touches of color into the rooms. “They acted kind of like the sun catchers you see in the Southwest,” he says.