Work / Case study
Éthérée Studio
Two hand-finished cream garments that had no photography yet. One field, one dropping sun, and a five-hour light ramp shot end to end, so the same two dresses read three different ways without a wardrobe change to hide behind.
- Format
- 4K · 24 fps · 0:38, plus stills
- Deliverables
- One asset library: film and editorial stills
- Crew
- Five, on location
- Location
- Terra Nova Park, Richmond, BC
Éthérée Studio had two finished garments and no photography. A knee-length beaded corset dress and a floor-length lattice-smocked satin gown, both hand-constructed, both cream. They needed to exist as images before they could exist as a product, a post, or a page.
The commission was one asset library carrying three jobs. Design documentation a buyer or a press contact can actually read. Social frames with enough atmosphere to stop a scroll and enough restraint to stay on-brand for a studio selling hand-finish rather than trend. And a website hero with real presence that will not date in six months.
One field, one dropping sun
Terra Nova Park delivers two things at once that most Lower Mainland locations offer only one of: wild, unmanicured rib-height meadow grass, and an unobstructed western horizon over the Strait. No ridge. The sun sets into open water, so nothing eats the low band and the full ramp survives through true sunset into afterglow.
The site adds a genuine dark treeline for compression frames, and a mown dike edge that works as a runway for the floor-length gown — necessary, because a cream satin skirt disappears into rib-height grass and snags on seedheads.
The hardest version of the brief
Cream garments in an open field at sunset are the hardest possible version of this brief, and the shoot was designed around that rather than in spite of it. Cream clips early, and clipped cream has no detail left to recover. Satin does not transmit light, it reflects it — so the angle of the sun to the fabric matters more than the exposure does.
Five hours of ramp meant the same two garments had to carry three registers: open high sun, the warm hour, and the afterglow once the disc is gone. Nothing was changed but the light.
A wardrobe built to be looked at closely
Both pieces are hand-constructed, and the documentation set had to make that legible: the beadwork, the scalloped swags, the lace-up back, the smocking, the beaded hem. Not flat-lay product photography, but frames where someone can read what the garment is made of and how it was made — and still want to wear it.
Down to the treeline
The dark treeline was the compression end of the day: long lens, the grass stacked flat behind her, the garment separated from the ground by nothing but its own value. Motion and stills came out of the same hours and the same light, which is the point of running the two together.
If you have a piece that has to exist as images before it exists as a product, the call is fifteen minutes. Tell us about the project.
Credits
- Creative direction, photography
- Kevin Cruz (@cruzkv)
- Production
- Gestalt Media House
- Dress design & styling
- Elise Charpentier
- Talent
- Nevaeh McGillion, Alaeria Agency
- Hair & makeup
- Tashi Leung
- Production assistant
- Carmelo Encluna
- Location
- Terra Nova Park, Richmond, BC
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