Mercy Workwear Campaign | Pacific Northwest Brand & Apparel Photography
There's a particular kind of shoot I love most. The kind where the gear, the location, and the people all just click. This was one of those days. I had the privilege of photographing a workwear campaign for Mercy, brought in by my dear friend and one of my favorite creatives to collaborate with, Rachel Libby. We spent a misty Pacific Northwest afternoon out in the woods with autumn doing its full, gold-and-rust performance overhead.
Mercy is a nonprofit doing some of the most beautiful, tangible work I've come across, partnering with on-the-ground organizations around the globe to provide clean water, food security, children's education, literacy, and life skills in places where those things are hardest to come by. What makes them especially interesting from a brand storytelling perspective is their business-as-mission model, where for-profit ventures like clothing, coffee, and women's collectives funnel profits directly back into the work. The campaign we shot is part of that bigger story. Apparel that exists not just to look good, but to fund tangible change.
For the shoot, we headed out to a creek-side spot tucked into the trees, where moss-covered logs, fallen leaves, and a slow-moving stream gave us all the texture we needed. The clothes (chunky beanies with leather patches, plaid flannels, quilted vests, broken-in workwear pants and boots) looked like they were made for the setting, because they were. Real chainsaws and orange safety helmets propped against split logs. Long iron pry bars in hand. We leaned into honesty over styling, and the autumn color behind everyone was unbelievable. Big yellow maples, deep rust on the forest floor, the soft gray-green of moss against weathered tree trunks.
A few favorites from the day: a husband-and-wife pair standing in front of the creek, both quietly looking off into the same middle distance, the kind of frame that doesn't need a caption. A sitting-and-standing portrait of another couple beside a stump and a chainsaw. A solo of a guy with an iron rod over his shoulder, looking right down the lens like he had work to do. And one of my absolute favorite frames of the year, a man in a soft gray beanie laughing at something just off camera, the whole shot backlit by yellow leaves.
What I love most about brand work like this is that it lets the product breathe. When the styling is honest, the location does its job, and the people are present and grounded, my role is just to stay out of the way and catch what's already there.
If you're a brand looking for someone to capture a campaign that feels grounded, real, and rooted in place, I'd love to talk. Whether it's apparel, lifestyle, outdoor, or something I haven't shot yet, my goal is always the same: to give you images that feel like the people and the work behind them.
Huge thanks to Rachel for bringing me onto this one (always a yes), to the Mercy team for trusting us with the campaign, and to the talent who showed up in the cold and made it look easy.
