Friday is t-shirt day (at least today)

This t-shirt project is a particularly satisfying one for Josh. Many of the projects that we get are based on the finished art that the client provides. We make the t-shirts, but we so not make the art.

In the case of this shirt, I made the art. The project began when Windermere Pacific West Properties contacted me one afternoon to work on a real estate presentation. I went out early the next morning to capture some photos of the new 295 Church Street Condominium project. The weather was overcast and Windermere needed photos the next day.

When you can't control the weather or the lighting, the next best thing is to find a creative way to work with what you've got to tell the story. And for me the story was that this new condo complex had a fabulous front/back yard--Pringle Creek Park in downtown Salem. It reminded me of when I lived in San Francisco and my yard across the street was Golden Gate Park.

With that in mind I looked for a way to convey the relationship between the park and the building. I found a very nice shot using Pringle Creek as the "front yard" foreground. My friends at Windermere liked the shot so much they made it the centerpiece of the presentation.

When the idea of t-shirts came up several weeks later, I had taken many more real estate photos of the complex in different weather and lighting conditions. I had even re-taken the photo above with blue sky in the background. Ironically blue sky changes the intensity of light and overcast skies provide a nice diffused light. The Windermere people poured through a bunch of my photos and kept coming back to this one as the one they wanted for the t-shirt.

We decided to create an artistic effect rather than print the unaltered photo. The photo looks great on a computer screen or on a high resolution print-out on photo paper. Yet t-shirts are porous and some of the subtle shifts in color, particularly on the building through the trees, got muted on fabric. The artistic rendition popped more and also added to the emotional appeal that the photo generated.

What the photo of the shirt here on this blog doesn't show well is the amazing detail in the print on fabric. Maybe soon you'll notice one walking around town and can see for yourself.

For more info on the 295 Church Street Condominiums, visit their website.