The “P.K. Bootmaker” experiment

The Firehouse Plaza in Prescott, Arizona hosts many unique businesses.  There’s Pangea Bakery, The Firehouse Kitchen, The Ian Russell Gallery, The Yarn Store, a new bead shop, and more….  It also hosts P.K. Bootmaker, a truly unique shop in town!

Did you notice I put a little extra umph behind the gallery listed?  Yeah, since I’m one of the folks running it I thought it important to give us a little extra flare!  😉

P.K. Bootmaker is run by Paul Krause.  He’s a great person, and a good neighbor in the Firehouse Plaza.  He regularly pops into the gallery and says hello, looks around, and I enjoy my conversations with him.  Saturday morning while I was getting all of my prints out the door from last week Paul stopped in with a question.  Could I whip up some type of poster or posters for his shop.  I was happy to give a hand to another local business, and took a few digital files home today to see what I could do.

What you’re seeing here is the first experiment.  Just an idea I had, and we’ll see what Paul thinks.  I’ve got several other experiments in mind, and that’s part of what I’ll be doing today.

This quick experiment was generated in Photoshop of course.  Each original photo was shot by a local film photographer who specializes in medium format photography.  All the backgrounds were in a deep red.  Lighting was different in each photo.  So, I selected the boots out of each image and brought them into a new file.  I created a background that closely matched the original backgrounds, then put each set of boots in a separate layer.  The background was altered using the Render Light filter to make it look as though there was specific lighting.  Finally I popped some text in that I came up with.

Paul creates custom boots.  My talks with him remind me of my personal favorite pair of boots, my Limmer’s.  It’s pretty amazing that there are still people out there who hand craft shoes and boots.

Monday’s are the only day we’re closed at the gallery.  Normally I’m still in there printing for a client, working through my own files, or catching up on my books.  Not today!  I squared all of that stuff away on Saturday, and Sunday I had a full day off (more ghost town photos folks).  While today is a full day off as well I thought it would be a good idea to start working through some layouts for Paul’s request.

Even when you’re not working you sometimes seem to find a way to work!  😉  Later I’ll be going out to Watson lake to take a few shots that a new client had a special request for.  A certain tree on the lake’s edge.  Should be an interesting one.  Wish it was a little warmer.