Getting ready for WHAMOBASS

This is the 45th year of WHAMOBASS, the Whiskey-Hill, Atherton, Menlo Oaks Ballooning and Sporting Society. This is an organization of hot-air balloonists who gather annually on the weekend closest to November 21, the anniversary of man’s first flight, and enjoy the sport of ballooning.

This is the WHAMOBASS panoramic portrait from 2007. It’s typical of the photos I have taken eachyear since 1998.

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The event moved around for the first 15 years, then settled-in at one location where it has been held since. That location is the town of Coalinga, on the western edge of California’s San Joaquin Valley. Each year the group brings colorful balloons to the skies of this city, and enjoys the company of fellow balloonists for the weekend.

I have been going to WHAMOBASS since 1973, I think. Every year I take photos and visit with friends, and I come home with great stories to tell.

And, every year since 1998 I have been taking a panoramic group photo just after the pilots’ meeting on Saturday morning. These panoramic images usually contain images of over 100 people. The technology has gotten better since 1998 – my camera changed several times – and I switched from film to digital somewhere in the middle there. The photos are both interesting and historically important, as they are a record of the people who attend the annual event, the longest continuously-running ballooning event in the world.

This is my T shirt design for the 2009 WHAMOBASS event, celebrating 45 years of hot-air ballooning in California, and the 226th year of human flight. That first  flight was made on November 21, 1783 by Pilâtre d’Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes in Paris, France. They flew under a balloon made of paper and linen, powered by hot-air from an on-board fire.

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This year I was asked by the club that sponsors the event to design the T shirt, an assignment I gladly accepted. Using one of my thousands of balloon photos, I designed a juke box frame for the photo (the theme is ’50s this year), and put a colorful image inside, one which features many balloons in flight.

The artwork was completed about a month ago, and it was sent in the invitation to the pilots who were invited. Now the orders are in, and the shirt artwork is off to production. I sent it yesterday afternoon to my friend Mark Coudray’s screen printing operation here in San Luis Obispo. Mark does some of the best full-color screen printing on Earth, hands-down.

Mark’s skillful artwork expert, Tami Dalley, uses both Illustrator and Photoshop to do routine screen printed garments. For this project she used Iciss, the multi-color separation program. My art, which I originated in RGB throughout, she converted into eight colors for the press. The colors include a luminance-based white which underprints the color printing. That white is needed because the T shirts we’re using are not white.

On Monday I will visit the plant to check the separations and get some screen captures for this blog. I want to follow the whole process from start to finish.

Coudray Serigraphics prints on an automated M&R screen printing press with as many as 15 colors. My job will probably use at least the white, which will likely be flash-dried on the press, plus seven process colors based on the colors in the artwork.

Coudray’s plant also uses a direct-to-screen imaging device which puts the artwork right on the stencil rather than on film. I will document that, too.

So, watch for some lovely screen-printed T shirts in the coming days. You’ll see it all here.