Headquarter in Oslo
The brief
In 2022 I was assigned by Crowe Accouting to help them to decorate their brand new office space. The office space consists of two floors with very high standards. As the client is based in Oslo the client had together with their interior decorator decided that they wanted imagery from the city where they have their headquarters.
“We can certainly recommend others to work with Henning on projects and we are a very satisfied customer.”
My process
Planning
A big photoshoot like this one requires quite a lot of planning. I was given a lot of freedom for pitching ideas and my biggest concern was how to make sure that the images did not become static and boring. The employees will see the images every day and I wanted to make the imagery to become something to rest the eyes on. I needed the light to be good and I wanted to contribute to a calm atmosphere complementing the warm wooden panels as well as the harder lines of glass panels. I also wanted to show Oslo with familiar scenes - all without making the images static.
Capturing the images
The first and foremost ingredient I wanted to add was great light. For photography the best lighting conditions are in the early morning or in the blue hour before dark set in. That alone requires a few conditions to be available - clear skies and working either very early or in the evenings and weekend. In order to have a shooting plan that was efficient I made a list of places I wanted to capture. Even though I live close to Oslo finding the interesting locations was time consuming. And many locations did not pan out as I wanted. Some locations simply had to many distracting elements and did not produce the clean end result I was hoping for.
Another element I wanted to bring in to the images was to prevent the images to become a snapshot in time. I did not want to freeze a frame. I wanted to showcase Oslo as a moving city and blur out the high pace of the city.
With the use of long exposures and filters I could make everyday subjects and movement in the city create a dream like effect. A technique which is time consuming capturing each individual frame. Many of the images have a exposure time of 1-2 minutes each.
Placement
With a lot of walls to cover I needed a way to be able to place individual images in the office space and to see how each individual image would look next to each other. I was able to use the floor plans for the two floors and in a digital work space place out all the images.
I frequently delivered images for review with the client and together with the interior decorator we place the individual pieces in a virtual office space plan.
Delivery and mounting
Delivering a project like this requires details in every aspect. From preparing the images to printing the images and the last step - mounting the images. After every morning I spent shooting the images I rated each image. I edited the images that fit the criteria and reject the ones that where not good enough. All the images that was approved was sent to the client for approval.
Delivering a project like this requires professional partners and over the years I have established a great relationship with true professionals in their field. FotoPhono a Oslo based company has in addition to my proofing manually gone through each image and prepared the images for printing as well as printed all the images. In addition they have delivered and mounted each image according to the specifications made with the client.
“Henning has captured all the images for our headquarter in Oslo and has delivered excellent quality both during the planning and in the delivery of imagery. In our premises there are now more than 60 images that are a great delight to both our employees and customers. All the photos were commissioned by us and Henning has captured Oslo in a fantastic way.”
— Aksel Stenhamar, Partner
