When Christenberry made his first forays into photography, color was largely the province of refined commercial practitioners and weekend snapshooters. Serious fine art photographers tended to shy away from color materials in favor of the reduced tones of black and white. Because Christenberry had come to photography by way of an interest in vernacular image making, his use of materials deemed outside the realm of fine art was apt. By the late 1970s, when the established photography world firmly embraced color, he was already a seasoned master adept at capturing chromatic harmonies, exemplified by this photograph of a roadside sign.