I met Dan Martino of Goodseed last summer, while my family and I were attending the Switchfoot Bro AM. A local annual event (awesome event), held in Encinitas, which we always look forward to. There are always a handful of companies that come to support the event and Dan was there with his company, Goodseed Clothing (www.goodseedclothing.com). My wife saw a t-shirt she really liked and asked me to come check it out to give my approval.
I’m always into of a good design and always in need of a t-shirt, so I became a quick fan at first glance of the style and design of what Dan had on display. Needless to say, my wife bought the shirt she liked, and I ended up purchasing a shirt for myself. Since last summer, Dan and I have stayed in touch and started communicating back and forth with each other. Dan shared with me more about his company, how he and his wife started it and the purpose behind the brand.
A big part of the brand is how they give back to the environment by committing to plant one new tree for every apparel item they sell.
“Welcome to Goodseed Clothing! We’re a local southern California based clothing company with a love and respect for nature and the outdoors. Because of this, we donate to trees.org for every item purchased.
Why the name Goodseed? A great and wise master once told his disciple to leave behind the good seeds for the coming generations, not rotten fruit.”
On social media sites, you’ll always find them using the tag line…
“Buy a Tee, Plant a Tree”
During all of this, it increased my respect for the company and my level of fan “ness”. Throughout my conversations with Dan we started talking about conceptual product shots and campaigns that would allow me to get involved and show off his product by photographing and retouch a small library of images for the company that supported there who, what and why of their company. There was a story there that needed to be told and to have great visuals that could narrate it and I was honored to depart of it.
One of the first ideas I threw out is actually the concept we decided to go with, which was to show the living trees in Southern California and iconic California environments wearing their clothes, to show that the environment gave its approval of the product. Away to create a story behind the word “seed” within their name. GOOD trees, which came from GOOD seeds as a symbol of a multi-generational effect we have on each other and on the environment.
The GOODSEED project was a success (in my biased opinion) and it was fun to get out, explore some coast line, forests and neighborhoods to capture the different scenes which were used for each photo. A few challenges I ran into were capturing tree limbs and then masking them during the post-processing stage to try and make them take on human form. With a mix of some Adobe stock photography, my personal shots and retouching, the results proved to create the relationship and impact both I and Dan set out to create.
Here are a few images from the project. If you have any questions about production, photography, planning, work flow or the retouching that went into this project….please ask.
