In January 2019 I was commissioned by the San Francisco based sustainable fashion company Everlane to capture stills and video at the Golden Star Co., Ltd. Factory which is located a few hours south of Hanoi in Thai Binh.
Everlane had recently partnered with the factory to manufacture their Tread line of sneakers and for every vendor or factory that they produce goods they document the factory and include a page about them on their site. Their goal is to capture an authentic sense of the factory so they partner with photographers like myself whom shoot in a photo journalistic way. They want nothing to be staged and they are after candid stills and video using available light.
I was familiar with their work as they have really set the standard in terms of their transparency with the factories that they do business with and I had been sent their work as a reference from a number of other fashion industry clients whom where wanting to follow in Everlane’s lead.
The brief for photography was to capture the following.
Wide shots of manufacturing process.
Worker-focused action shots. Medium & Close Up angles of production.
Worker portraits
Close up detail shots that include Everlane brand visibility.
Wide exteriors of factory and surroundings.
For the video portion, they wanted 10 - 15 ambient clips showing various stages of production within the factory and they said it would ideal if some them could be easily looped.
I flew up to Hanoi the day before the shoot and the following morning I met Jennifer from their production team who was in Hanoi to oversee the final stages of production before the sneakers release. We headed out to the factory together and then Jennifer and some of the factory representatives took me on a tour of the factory to see all the different stages of production. We then allowed about 2 hrs time in each of the three buildings that the sneakers production would take place and we got to work.
I was going to be shooting stills on one of my Sony A7RIII bodies and video and my other Sony A7RIII body but I also brought along my Canon 5D MK III as I thought that I could set up for a few timelapses. I mentioned this to Jennifer and she loved the idea and I think that the timelapse that I shot shows the scale of the operation in a interesting way that a regular speed video could not.
I went about the stills in the way I normally do by walking the lines and looking for interesting subject matter. I’m always looking for interesting light so I’m drawn to any machines that emit strong light and to areas at the side of the factory where the natural light is filtering through the windows.
For the video it was important that camera was still and the motion within the frame needed be reasonably simple and I tried to capture both wide and close up shots of the same action so that both shots could be cut together to create a seamless looped video.
I feel that the moving images are really eye capturing and I look forward to shooting more assignments like this in the future.
A behind the scenes look into the creation of video and stills content of the manufacturing process for high end medical scrubs company Jaanuu at one of their textile factories in Ho Chi Minh City.