One frame, three crops – executive portraits for Talenom

I photographed the portraits of Marika Aho, country manager for Talenom in Finland, an accounting firm, at the company premises in Oulu. The work came straight from the client, who needed images for its communications in many different places, among them a media bank for journalists to download from.

An assignment like this is rarely solved with one picture. The same person turns up in many places, and each of them wants the frame cropped a little differently. So we planned two kinds of picture from the start: a portrait on a neutral backdrop and a set of pictures in the building itself.

I made the neutral background on site. I brought a folding backdrop and studio lights, so an even pale background appeared in a meeting room and no separate studio visit was needed. From that one frame I delivered three crops: a landscape with room for a headline, an upright for a magazine column and a square for a social profile. One frame, three places.

After that I moved into the rooms of the building. A blue sofa corner and a small wooden table gave a light, relaxed mood, a plum wall and a beige armchair a darker and more formal one. The black suit and the pink blouse stayed the same, so the pictures belong together even as the mood changes.

In the lobby there was the one space no backdrop can replace: the lit Talenom sign behind the reception desk. I placed Aho at the right edge and left the space beside the sign empty, so the frame keeps room for a headline and the brand shows without anything covering it.

The pictures went into Talenom communications. The three crops of the backdrop frame sit on the company media page for journalists to download at full resolution, and the rest serve other communications needs as and when they come up.

The images can be downloaded on the Talenom media page: talenom.com