Kodachrome

Drive south from San Francisco with a motel geek — which you’re now doing, by the way — and the born-again motel variations roll past like Kodachrome images in a slide show.

In Miami, McCartney’s photos burst into Kodachrome color and the newly minted celebrities seem to bloom in glamorous new surroundings: lounging poolside, sipping scotch and riding around in motorboats.

When Saul Leiter began shooting Kodachrome slides in New York in the late 1940s, color was scorned by most serious photographers, who thought of it as a hobby for vacationing dads or the commercial domain of magazines and advertising agencies.

Part of his fondness for red may derive from Kodachrome’s exceptional capacity to capture its vibrancy.

“He got stories from them. He took Kodachrome color slides. They would talk about this relative from California who drove a nice rental car and wore good clothes.”