The short
version

Jenya Mironov photographs brand activations on the rooftop pool deck at The William Vale in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, including the Sol de Janeiro build for Sephora Summer Club in August 2026. The deck is open to the sky, so an afternoon there is lit by full midday sun and by nothing else: hard shadows fall across the deck, teal glass and silver caps throw sharp specular highlights, and the pool is the only fill on offer. The working method is to expose for the sun, place people so the shadow falls where it helps rather than across a face, and let light bouncing off the water open the shade on skin and on product. JPX Studios covered that afternoon as one gallery of 719 frames: product stills, guest and talent portraits, and details of the build.

Knowing
the room

What the space is

The part of The William Vale I have worked in is its rooftop pool deck: a pool, the deck around it, and open sky. Nothing out there is covered, so whatever the sky is doing that afternoon is the light you are given, and in August that is full midday sun for the whole run of an activation.

What I shot there

Sephora Summer Club, in August 2026, was a Sol de Janeiro activation built across the deck. The pool carried soccer ball beach balls and navy JANEIRO inner tubes. Daybeds held branded pillows and yellow striped towels, a rack of jerseys stood on the terrace, and an embroidery station ran heat presses over trays of patches while guests drank from branded coconuts. Coverage came to 719 frames in one gallery: product stills of Cheiroso 7 and Cheiroso 10, guest and talent portraits across the deck, and detail frames of the build.

Why coverage here needs a photographer who knows the room

Full midday sun is the whole problem and the whole opportunity. It drops hard shadows across the deck, it sits directly over faces for the hours the activation runs, and there is no ceiling and no near wall to bounce anything off. What the deck gives back is the pool: a wide, bright, low sheet of reflected light that fills the shade on skin and on product if you place the subject to take it. Teal glass and silver caps catch that light as sharp speculars, so the product frames are built around where the highlight lands rather than around where the bottle happens to sit.

For coverage at The William Vale or anywhere else in Brooklyn, see NYC event photography or get in touch through the contact page.

Covered here