With applicants sparse, the Coupeville Festival Association went searching for an artist for the town’s 2016 Arts and Crafts Festival poster.

The search led to Coupeville photographer Jeri Goldstein.

A photograph that Goldstein took at the festival caught the eye of festival association board member Carol Moliter.

Moliter worked with the horizontal image, cropped it tightly into a vertical slice of the original, and digitally enhanced it to place the focus on an appealing composition.

The result was unveiled and met with approval by festival association members in a meeting room inside Whidbey General Hospital Monday night.

Goldstein’s image pops from the poster with bold, bright colors that highlight a photo that shows festival-goers admiring artwork, a row of festival tents and the American flag.

A part-time resident of Coupeville who spends her winters in warmer climates, Goldstein was interviewed recently in Surprise, Ariz., by Moliter. Video footage of the interview was shown to festival association members at Monday night’s meeting.

“I love it. I love what you did with it,” Goldstein told Moliter. “I know a lot of photographers would not want their work necessarily manipulated, but I don’t think photography lends itself to that concept of the poster for the festival really well. I think it needs to draw the eye and have a lot of color.”

It will probably be March until the poster is printed and publicly distributed, according to Mike Dessert, who was re-elected president of the festival association for another two years.

The 2016 Coupeville Arts and Crafts Festival is scheduled for Aug. 13-14.

Dessert said it’s an annual struggle to receive poster art entries despite the $500 that goes to the artist selected.

He said he liked the collaborative effort from Goldstein and Moliter.

“It thought it was great,” he said. “We thought it was really neat. It had the flag. It had the tents. It had all of the elements.”