Ball Mason Jar

Here's my latest watercolor, finished just yesterday. Although I'm happy with the result - since glass is always a special challenge - I'm even more disappointed than usual in the quality of the scan. The scanner's light always seems to wash out the images, while color and saturation correction in photoshop doesn't do an acceptable job of compensation. So this is the best of three attempts. Does anyone have recommendations? (Even photographing it didn't prove acceptable!)

As for the subject, I think most people look at these old Ball Mason jars with a touch of nostalgia. I recall seeing them at both sets of grandparents' homes, while my mother would receive gifts of jams, jellies - and even green beans - from older family members who still used the jars for storing fruits and vegetables. I also remember my great-grandmother's house in which there were shelves lined with an assortment of fuit and veg. In fact, my maternal grandparents would "can" figs and fig preserves in these jars. (The fig tree still grows in my grandmother's back yard and usually yields a healthy crop which she and my mother sometimes harvest.) Unfortunately I also remember numerous "country"-themed restaurants like "The Black-Eyed Pea" that tried to enhance the "down home" atmosphere by serving their drinks - always iced tea for me! - in Mason jars.

As usual I took a different perspective on this image, not wanting simply to present it in its entirety, static, resting on a table or shelf. Here it's closely cropped, turned slightly, with light from rear left highlighting the raised lettering and imperfections in the glass. (Aren't the blue jars rarer and considered more collectible?) 9" x 12" on Fabriano paper