How this all came about! Sharing the steps and encounters of how the shirt’s been developed is part of what I do for The Imaginary Zebra. Not only do I think the process is just as important as the final product, if not more, I’d like to keep you guys in the loop while sporting the tee – making this a tee with a story. I’ve done quite a few of these design processes in the past, here goes another!
To start, this is a limited collaboration tee with Connor Surdi Photography.
Who’s Connor?
He’s a self-taught photographer based out of Bellevue, Washington. A shot of some trees during a wedding in 2007 led to his endeavor to becoming a future Japan fashion street photographer(his dream). I’ve known this man through Rolo (dunksrnice), but we’ve never met. Yet, his passion’s apparent. His photo projects and portraits of fly whips and hot babes shows innovation, creativity, and character. Not only am I inspired, I’m jealous.
↑Few hundreds miles away. We’ve never met, all it took was a few messages for brainstorming to get this collabo going. It’s the beauty of the mixture between internet and passion.
Speaking of character, here are some faces of Connor on facebook:
↑Ladies, wipe your mouth. He’s taken, by the lady below:
↑”Le Canon” is her name.
With my growing passion for photography and our interest for Japanese culture, we settled our idea with the following:
Connor explained it better:
“I proposed an idea to Benson (Imaginary Zebra Founder) to create a super hero that is made of cameras/lenses etc.
He went above and beyond and created THIS. SO AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!! When I saw these designs for the first time…I peed my pants, a few times. When he showed me the photoshopped version, mocked on a t-shirt…I lost it haha. I was so stoked and he put what I had in my head, and put exactly that into this design…..But, more. (Thanks, Connor)
…there will possibly be Nikon Cameraman shirts as well….
Ladies: Cameraman is used in Japan by men and women to describe themselves as photographers! No gender bias here! “
To get the design going, I had to have my set up:
..and some references in hand to better sculpt this super hero of ours.
Rough sketches:
The basic equipments for the hero is the 600EX-RT flash for the right shoulder, a 400mm f2.8L L cannon, 5D mkiii with the 85mm f1.2L for the body, and a belt with unlimited amount of 32GB compact flash disks. You know, just the basics.
↑Sketch to outline to…
This:
Lower back of the tee’s got the OG TIZ back logo.
..but with a little twist:
Along side with some of the cameras I own because it’s only fitting:
BAM! Now you know a bit more about this tee than its graphics.
Now available to pre-order here.
Connor can be found here.
’til next time,
-Benson|| Twitter || Facebook || 365. || Shop of Imagination ||
