BRANDS & BUSINESSES

DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY & FILMS

WHO THIS IS FOR:

Brands and companies seeking a company profile that resonates, in photography, film, or both.
The standard version does not fit you - you want to have something that truly speaks who you are, not what you look like.

Brands and companies whose visual presence does not reflect what they have built.
Your business is credible and proven, but the outside world is not aware of it. You may have great stories to share.

Brands and companies wanting to capture what they have built to communicate and archive.
You value the people, culture, and it currently has no visual permanent proof.

THIS IS NOT BRAND CONTENT,
THIS IS BRAND DOCUMENTARY.

Brand content is built for reach, brand documentary is built for trust.

Brand content shows what you do, brand documentary shows what your brand is really about - the people, culture, and how the passion of each work together to create something great. It communicates why the audience should care about your brand.

The main difference between the two is the depth of story and how each image embodies the narrative.

Documentary work is built around the soul of the business through real, unscripted moments.

Roy’s Restaurant Head Chef Edgar Agbayani greets the husband and son of his sushi chef in the background. A head chef that cares about his team members, does this not to perform, but to appreciate them.

YOUR BRAND’S STORY, CURATED.

Your story is not how you made the brand, it is what makes someone who has never heard you to feel connected to you.

Documentary photography and film start from the inside. Not from a brief, a mood board, or a content calendar, but from the moments, the people, and the decisions that already exist inside your business and already carry the weight of a real story.

The story of your business, when interpreted by the people living it, is almost always incomplete. Not because it is untrue, but because familiarity flattens what is actually remarkable. The moment everyone inside the building takes for granted is frequently the moment that communicates everything about who you are to someone encountering you for the first time.

Nobody has gone looking for your story with the right eyes.

WHAT BRAND DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM ACTUALLY PRODUCES

Many can produce technically sound photographs and films. Not many can produce images that makes us feel something.

What a documentary practitioner brings is not just a camera. It is the discipline of going deep into your reality while seeing it with the curiosity of someone who has never been there before and with the exact knowledge of what to look for. That combination of inside access, outside perspective is what produces a story that is both true and felt.

The truth behind every story-telling, carefully composed frame makes them special. No stock image delivers that, no AI-generated visual comes close, because neither of them was there. Documentary photography is credible because it is rooted in reality - in actual unstaged moments, actual people, and actual decisions that happened.

In turn, these images and films are assets that extend far beyond any single campaign or platform. While each commission has a specific goal, the nature of the final products whether in documentary photography or films can experience value multiplication: as archives, investor and social media relations, annual report images, etc.

We remember great stories. And images that carry the same feeling as a great story create a lasting connection to your brand that no amount of designed content can replicate. It is how memory and trust actually work.

Cindy the co-owner of wenzlau vineyard picking grapes during the first harvest for their rose line of wines in the early morning as the fruit picking crew are doing their work in the early morning

During one of their harvests, Cindy, the co-owner of Wenzlau Vineyard and Winery is actively picking the grapes that she helped grow all season long.

BRAND AND CORPORATE DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM SERVICES

Brand, business, and corporate profiles, founder and team stories
Separate yourself from the pack - communicate, not through the standard communication of numbers and capabilities, but through crafting of stories that draw the audience’s attention.
Brand documentary film
Gives another perspective of communicating with your audience in a deeper level.
Behind the scenes culture documentation
Archives, culture building, pride.
Press, media kit, and newsletters
Content foundation that competitors cannot replicate
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) documentation and film
Annual report photography, stakeholder and investor relations materials

ERWIN DARMALI

Documentary photographer and filmmaker for brands and businesses, focused on story development, translating them into visual narratives that resonate. Based between Jakarta, Indonesia and Pasadena, CA. Over two decades working in both disciplines across Indonesia and the United States. Work commissioned by companies, institutions and private clients.

One discipline behind all of it: find the story that is already there and make it impossible to ignore.

SELECTED CLIENTS AND COLLABORATIONS

PRIOR PROJECTS

PROJECT: CHEF PROFILE

Servers testing the specials of the day so they are able to explain the foods to their patrons.

PROJECT: WENZLAU VINEYARD

Wenzlau Vineyard is the passion project of Cindy and Bill Wenzlau that started not long after they became empty nesters. Cindy devoted herself to the vineyard, maneuvering through all the challenges they faced as they tried to figure out what direction to go with their wine. The all natural, organic way of growing the grapes is a choice to provide wine that is authentic to the nature and climate of the hills of Santa Rita would give them. “The more the vine struggles, the more characteristics the grapes are going to give to the wine” became one of the learnings that they experienced, that reflected them about raising their four children. Eventually all four children came back to help the family business in their own capacities, bringing the family back, closer than ever.

Wenzlau Vineyard landscape by the Santa Rita hills

Bill Wenzlau applying lanyard to the grape bins on a cart that is attached to a tractor in front of the storage building in the early morning before the harvest at Wenzlau vineyard

A row of ripe grapes on the vine and a pair of hands on the right cutting them at harvest

a man arranging the fruit bins on the side of the grape vines while on the other side the crew is beginning to start harvesting grapes in the dark early morning

A pair of fruit pickers hands holding grapes placing them into a full yellow bin printed with the name Wenzlau on the front.

A row of grape pickers walking back through the rows of grape vines set in front of the hills in the early morning

Bill Wenzlau inspecting the grapes inside the yellow bins in his winery, seen through an iconic image of the woman drinking a glass of wine

A man reaches into the french grape press to retrieve some grapes

three people inspecting grapes from yellow bins

three people surrounging an old french grape press while pouring grapes from yellow bins. behind them one person is on the table inspecting grapes.

Old french wine press pushing on grapes, foam starts coming up from between the wooden slats

Cindy, the coowner of wenzlau winery waits as the french wine press is extracting the grape wine out of the harvested grapes in the winery

INDUSTRY

A welder in a welding gear is captured through the cutout of the welding curtain

A woman's hand is seen advancing the material of a outdoor furniture umbrella on a knitting machine

two people talking in the midst of people working on a furniture assembly area in a production floor.

a piece of marble is installed in a construction area while back lit. behind it there is a person working on the floor taking measurements in the construction site

grind smoke coming out of a giant slab of uncut marble in an industrial area

An industrial machine detail cutting a block of marble into thin layers, covered with water spray and drips

industrial size polishing machine running through the surface of a marble

A hand guides a slab of finished marbe through other slabs of marble of different kinds

COMMUNITIES AND EDUCATION

A child with down syndrome uses hand signals to communicate with her mother

Club 21, a community serving families with down syndrome children, was started by 7 mothers who felt there were something more in their children. One of the biggest obstacles were communication, considering the problems of development in their children with this condition. Nancy, one of the moms, had the idea to use sign language - her first language as a kid born from deaf parents. This first breakthrough becomes the first of this movement.

A child's hand building a colorful lego on a carpet streaks of light all over

CHECK OUT CLUB 21 PROJECT

Two major gangs wrecked this neighborhood, Children were parentless, trafficking drugs, introduced to violence from an early age. The community fought back and created change. The question becomes: how do they rebuild and set the kids on a trajectory that defies all odds? This is a story of Harambee in Northwest Pasadena, California.

CHECK OUT REALIZING A DREAM

9 people working and discussing an important matter around a table filled with notes and papers, in a dark room with a colorful arty projection as their background

Universal Right to Literacy: A Shared Mission,photographed for Public Counsel and Enso. 150 diverse cultural leaders from philanthropy, entertainment, journalism, cultural institutions, for-profit and non-profit brands worked together to determine how to frame this issue to engage popular support.