Makin' it Real

How do you photograph a line of custom shoes before any have been made?

Last Fall Nike partnered with Pendleton Woolen Mills to create a line of custom shoes to be featured on their NikeID website. The only trouble was since these were custom shoes, none of the them would be made before the campaign went “Live”.

What they did have were some prototypes made from light gray leather and rolls of Pendleton wool fabrics. So when they asked photographer Michael Jones to create photos of the new shoes he brought me on board to handle the extensive retouching that would be needed to pull this off.

Working with Michael we formed a plan where Michael would shoot the gray shoes as is, then shoot additional frames with the fabric draped over the shoes. There were 19 shoes in all that would need to be “created”. When the gray shoes arrived Michael discovered that many of the base shoes would need to be cobbled together from several other shoes.

Using a strap from this one and a sole from that one my team and I first built the proper base shoes then went to work compositing the various shots of fabric draped shoes adding lighting and shadowing to bring out the shape and form of the shoes. Then the stitching was added along with changing the colors of the soles and swooshes where needed.

All in all 19 shoes were created with the first line going live mere days after delivery.

Here is a sampling of some of the shoes created as part of this campaign.