CASE STUDY: Sony Kando Trip
Sony's Kando trip is an invite-only annual retreat for their camera ambassadors, and it grew out of Yeah Field Trip, the community-first trips Whitney built long before Sony was involved. These aren't small shoots. For three days, we turn a conference room at a resort like The Bacara in Santa Barbara, Sun Valley Resort, or Suncadia into a full working talent and production house: models + talent, styling, creative direction, hair + makeup, and prop styling + art department building sets.
Art Direction
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Talent Casting
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Styling
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On-Location Production
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Brand Ambassador Events
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BTS Documentation
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Art Direction . Talent Casting . Styling . On-Location Production . Brand Ambassador Events . BTS Documentation .
HERE’S WHAT WE DID
01 Pre-production starts weeks out. We plan the sets, locations, and full crew for each stop before anyone sets foot on site.
02 We turn a conference room at the resort into a working production hub for three days: hair and makeup stations, a whole wardrobe world, and creative direction, run like an in-house talent agency on site.
03 Our art department and prop stylists build sets on location, bringing in props and design elements. Wardrobe and props are pulled and prepped ahead of time, so everything the art department needs is already sourced before we land on site.
04 Styling led by Roma and team, across multiple looks for 20+ talent, every day.
05 We run talent on the go: casting, booking, and managing local models at every location, like an in-house agency, so the visiting photographers have real people to shoot, connected to the venue location.
06 We pre-scout locations across each resort property, from The Bacara in Santa Barbara to Sun Valley Resort to all of Suncadia, so every session has somewhere worth shooting.
07 Hallie shoots behind-the-scenes at each trip, documenting the production itself alongside the portfolio work.
08 We build the personal side of it too: hiring rad people, walking attendees to where they want to go if they ask for help, and casting local talent into the location so it feels like community, not a corporate itinerary.
Situation
Solution
Result
Kando Trip is Sony's official, invite-only retreat for their camera ambassadors, hosted at properties like The Bacara in Santa Barbara, Snowbird, Sun Valley Resort, and Suncadia. It's a real production at real scale: hundreds of ambassadors, multiple shoot days, and a resort that isn't built to be a studio. The challenge is turning hotel infrastructure, a conference room, a lawn, a ballroom, into a working production house for three days, without losing the connection-first energy the trip grew out of.
Pre-production, weeks out: Before anyone arrives, we've planned the sets, the locations, and the crew for every stop. Nothing about a three-day production at a resort property happens by accident.
A production house inside a conference room: We turn hotel meeting space into hair and makeup stations, a wardrobe world, and creative direction, running the whole thing like an in-house talent agency for three days.
Sets built, not just found: Our art department and prop stylists build out the locations rather than shooting them as-is, with wardrobe and props pulled and prepped ahead of time so nothing is scrambled together on site.
Real talent, real locations: At every stop, from The Bacara to Sun Valley to Suncadia, we run talent on the go, casting, booking, and managing local models like an in-house agency, and pre-scout the property, so ambassadors are shooting real portfolio work, not a staged demo.
We document it too: Alongside the production itself, Hallie shoots behind-the-scenes of the whole trip, capturing the scale of it, not just the final images.
Connection is the heart of it: We hire rad people, we walk attendees to the place they want to go if they ask for help, and we cast local talent into the location so it feels like community, not a corporate itinerary. For three days, it's a true creative family unit.
Kando has run every year since, at real scale, full productions at properties like The Bacara Santa Barbara, Snowbird, Sun Valley Resort, and Suncadia, and the Yeah Field Trip soul it started with is still in it. Ambassadors leave with real portfolio work and community they made in three days.
Crew size shifts trip to trip, but it's always a full team: creative direction, talent management and casting, hair and makeup, wardrobe styling led by Roma and team, prop styling and art department, and behind-the-scenes documentation.
It has built a network, much like Yeah Field Trip. The models, talent, and crew we cast for Kando Trip don’t stay in one lane: we’ve brought people we met on a Sony trip into work for brands like Ship Supply and vice versa. Every trip adds to a real working ecosystem of creatives across cities, not a one-off casting list.
