What Really Happens at Sony's Invite-Only Kando Trip

Every year around late summer, my inbox and DMs start filling up with some version of the same question: "What actually happens at Sony Kando?"

It's a fair thing to wonder. From the outside, Kando looks like a mystery box. A few hundred creators disappear to some beautiful corner of the country for a few days, flood everyone's feeds with incredible work, and then go quiet. There are no badges for sale. There's no public schedule. If you weren't invited, you're left watching from the outside, trying to figure out what the whole thing even is.

So let me pull back the curtain. This year, Kando came to Stowe, Vermont, the first time in the event's history it's been held on the East Coast, and it might be my favorite one yet.

First, What Kando Isn't

The fastest way to explain Kando is to clear up what it's not, because almost every assumption people make about it is wrong.

It's not a trade show. There are no rows of booths and no one working a script to sell you something. It's not a conference either, even though there are classes. And it's definitely not a follower-count contest. That last one trips people up the most. Every year I watch people online insist that Kando is just for the mega-creators, and every year I sit at dinner next to photographers with tiny followings who are doing some of the most interesting work in the room. If there's a pattern to who gets the invite, it has far more to do with the impact you've had on the community than the number next to your handle.

The other thing people love to bring up is money. For a year or two, Kando had a paid ticket option. This was sort of an add-on to the full event. There would be Kando as it still is today, then there would be additional days added on to the end where people could pay to come experience similar things. But every time it came up online, someone would call it a "pay-to-play" scheme, as if Sony had figured out how to get photographers to fund their own marketing. I never saw it that way. When you added up the lodging, the meals, the days of instruction from world-class photographers, and the sheer amount of gear sitting there waiting to be used, that ticket was one of the better deals in the industry. But these days the trip is invite-only and Sony takes care of the people they bring in. The value equation hasn't changed. What you walk away with from a few days here would cost you a small fortune to assemble on your own, assuming you could assemble it at all.

Here's the part that really surprises people: nobody at Kando is under any obligation to create. There's no contract that says you have to post, tag, or produce a single frame. You're invited to experience it. Whatever you make from that is entirely up to you. That one detail changes the entire feel of the event. It takes the pressure off and, ironically, makes everyone want to create even more.

A Playground, Not a Schedule

What Sony builds instead is closer to a playground for creators. There are lit sets, models, and backdrops available during huge chunks of the day, so you can walk up, grab a setup, and make something without that awkward "all eyes on you" feeling. Want to shoot at sunrise? There's something for that. Want to be out past midnight? There's something for that too.

Woven through all of it are classes and experiences. There are sessions scheduled from morning to night on just about anything you can think of, taught by photographers and filmmakers at the very top of the craft. But honestly, some of the best teaching happens nowhere near a classroom. You learn just as much standing in a lunch line next to someone whose work you've followed for years and asking how they actually approach a shoot, or watching over a shoulder as a creator works a scene in a way that never would have occurred to you. That kind of learning is impossible to schedule, and Kando is built to let it happen constantly.

And then there's the stuff that makes people go, wait, at a photography event?

This year in Stowe, that included zip lining through the Vermont tree line. There was an afternoon hanging out with a small army of golden retrievers. One dinner event included a camera-based trivia night that got a lot more competitive than anyone will admit. And on the last night, Sony even brought in an entire set of carnival games, and a group of attendees spun up a full-on Mario Kart tournament that ran late into the night.

None of this is filler. It's the whole point. Kando throws a couple hundred creative people into the same beautiful space and gives them enough shared, slightly ridiculous experiences that the walls come down. You stop being strangers who follow each other online and start being friends.

The Year It Got Personal

I've been to a few of these now, but this was the first year I got to step out from behind the camera and actually contribute to the event itself. That shift is a big part of why this one stuck with me.

The first piece was the Works in Progress presentations, a session where creators get seven minutes each to share a project they're actively building. Not finished, polished, sponsor-ready work. Real, in-motion, still-figuring-it-out work. I used my seven minutes to share my ongoing family documentary project.

For those who don't know it: when my wife and I first started having kids, I heard a phrase that absolutely leveled me. One day you'll pick your kids up for the last time, and you won't even know it's happening. That thought has never left me. So this project is my answer to it. Every year I document my own family. No posing, no directing, no "look at the camera." Just the mundane, everyday, real moments as they naturally happen, because those are the ones that disappear the fastest. I put together a project like this each year, but the slideshow I presented at Kando was the first time I've combined multiple years into a single piece, set to a custom song I wrote and produced through Suno. Standing in front of a room full of top-tier creators and sharing something that personal was terrifying, but it was also easily one of my favorite moments of the trip.

The second piece was leading my very first photo walk for the event, something I got to do alongside my good friend Sarah France, trading off on setups as we went. I'll be honest: leading a walk at an event this stacked with talent is intimidating. But it ended up being a blast. We had about 15 people, and we spent the hour hunting for light and composition and shooting wedding-couple-style portraits wherever we saw fit.

My favorite moment? We turned an ugly, fenced-in backup generator into a set of images that looked like someone's dream location. It was the kind of spot you'd walk past a hundred times without a second glance. A little intention with the light, a deliberate angle to hide the clutter, and we had magic. That's the lesson I wanted people to walk away with. Yes, the technical power of off-camera flash to completely transform a scene, but also the creative muscle of seeing the potential in a spot everyone else walks right past. The best location is often the one nobody thinks to look at twice (BTS look here).

I also got roped into a fun challenge with my friend Taylor Jackson, the Canada-based wedding photographer and massive YouTube presence, where Taylor got to pick my shooting location and I just had to make it work. I love a good challenge like that. Being forced into a spot you'd never choose on your own makes you notice things you'd normally walk right past. It's the same muscle as the generator, just with someone else holding the reins.

About the Gear (Because I Know You'll Ask)

One of the genuine perks of Kando is full access to basically anything Sony makes, so you can pick up bodies and lenses you've been curious about and actually put them to work in the field.

This year I bounced between the Sony RX1R III and the a9 III, paired with a rotating cast of lenses. I spent most of my time with the 28-70mm f/2 and the 50-150mm f/2. That pair alone is almost unfair. I also had a lot of fun getting weird with SIRUI's Astra 50mm autofocus anamorphic for something a little more cinematic. Having that kind of range on hand, with zero pressure to buy anything, is a rare thing.

The Part Nobody Believes: Sony Actually Listens

If there's one claim about Kando that earns me eye rolls, it's this one: I tell people Sony genuinely listens to feedback, and they assume I'm just parroting a marketing line. I get it. Most of us have fired off feedback into some faceless corporate void and never heard a word back. The idea that a company this size would actually change its products because a photographer asked sounds a little too good to be true.

But it's real, and Kando is where I've watched it happen firsthand. Sony brings actual engineers to the event, the people who build these cameras, and they sit down with you to hear what you love, what drives you crazy, and what you wish the cameras did differently. It isn't a suggestion box on a wall. It's a real conversation, and they're taking notes the entire time.

I've seen requests from those rooms show up in later cameras. Here's a concrete one. Dial switching used to trigger a pop-up every single time you moved between custom positions, confirming the settings tied to whatever spot you'd just landed on, whether that was M to 1 or 1 to 2. It killed the entire point of having quick-change dials, because you had to confirm the change before you could take a single shot. On newer Sony bodies, flipping that dial jumps your settings instantly. No pop-up, no interruption. I can't prove I'm the reason it changed, but I know I was one of the voices asking for it, and that is exactly how these fixes happen.

That two-way channel is a huge part of why I trust this brand the way I do. It's the whole reason I recently sat down and wrote out a full wishlist of firmware changes I'd love to see across the Sony lineup, everything from smarter custom buttons to real anamorphic support for photos. I wrote the whole thing knowing Sony might actually read it, because I have watched them do exactly that.

Why I Keep Coming Back

If you strip away the zip lines and the carnival games and the incredible gear, what you're left with is the actual product Sony is building here: community. Every event I've ever attended has some invisible line between the teachers and everyone else, whether it's reserved seating, special badges, or a "you are not on this level" energy. At Kando, that line just isn't there. You share tables at every meal, you shoot alongside people you've admired for years, and you leave with friends instead of contacts.

Kando is a Japanese word that roughly translates to the sense of awe you feel when you experience something beautiful and amazing for the first time. Four days in Vermont, watching a fenced-in generator turn into a dream location and a room full of strangers turn into friends, I can tell you the event still lives all the way up to its name.

So if you ever find an invite in your inbox, don't overthink it. Just go.