This is a series of photo composites I created for Salehe Bembury, former Sneaker Design Director for Versace who is now developing products for multiple brands. One of them is New Balance. Salehe's designs are usually very innovative and he has created an overall aesthetic for his products which are often targeted towards outdoors activities like hiking which he is a true advocate. The whole "go outside and explore the world" kind of attitude.

So, this whole connection of a product (sneaker) with the outdoors featuring beautiful scenery if very much my thing so naturally I was a great fit for this project.

The shoe is the New Balance 574 Yurt which is a chunky and rugged sneaker yet very stable and comfortable for long trek walks. Its main feature is a functional whistle attached to the ankle panel of the shoe so you can blow the whistle in case of an emergency to call the attention of someone farther from you.

This is the 2nd drop of this shoe. It has been released before in 2 different color ways different from this 2nd drop so there most be a continuation of the concept from the previous release but with a different feel this time. Since the feature of the integrated whistle is know by now I wanted to play with surreal and maybe absurd idea that the giant shoe required a whole sanitation team to clean it after you use it. I pitched this idea to Salehe and he was OK letting execute it. Here it is:

Here a little layer breakdown of the most intricate photo composite of this series. Took me about 6 hours to complete but it was fun:

But this is not the first time I have created images for Salehe. I have actually created photo composites for most of his sneaker releases. Here they are in case you were curious:

All of these composites were created using Adobe Photoshop®, product shots provided by  Salehe, New Balance and other media sources and the background pictures are stock images from popular sources,  mainly Adobe Stock® but also ShutterStock®, iStock® and POND5®.