Tikkurila Annual Report 2011

In the autumn of 2011, I took this photo. So fourteen and a bit years ago.

The photo was taken as part of a four-image series designed for Tikkurila’s annual report. Originally, the main image of the series was intended to be a shot of this mysterious woman moving through nature with a suitcase in the reeds by the shore, but after the shoot this frame became the favorite.

This project marked the beginning of a collaboration that lasted several years and included the graphic design of the annual report, concept development, supporting photography, and layout work.

We had started our entrepreneurial journey with a friend just a couple of years earlier by founding a design agency. One could write a few-thousand-page dramedy about the early years of the agency, but perhaps I will save that for the next post. This client was a big deal for a small design studio, and we immersed ourselves in the projects with great passion, without counting the hours. At that time, the annual reports of publicly listed companies were usually produced by large advertising or communications agencies. Tikkurila certainly took a risk in trusting that our three-person outfit at the time could handle a job like this. We handled it honorably, at least that is how I remember it.

I also remember that when we were presenting this to the client, it felt like having just downed a triple espresso, with my heart rate near its maximum, thoughts racing in every direction, and a slight tremor in my hands. Then the client suddenly liked our ideas, gave us free hands for the execution as far as I recall, and even paid for it. Tikkurila was our first so-called big client.

The model in the photo is the ever stunning Shadi Razavi, who was also involved in the years that followed.

When I look at this image now, I still see a strong portrait. For this post, I went through all 381 RAW files from that situation, and this one still stood out as my favorite, although there were other fine shots as well. The large number of frames is explained by the fact that at the time I was shooting with a Canon 5D Mark II, which required quite a few extra shots to be completely certain that the focus was exactly where it needed to be. Nowadays, when working with a mirrorless camera, the focus hits the mark nine times out of ten, so the number of frames per scene has decreased radically. This probably does not interest anyone, but so be it. And of course, the images could have been captured directly to a laptop and so on.

Returning to the image itself, there is something enigmatic in the woman’s gaze. Where is she looking? The dark eyes somehow fit perfectly. The hair is moving beautifully. Other than color adjustments, the image has hardly been edited. I do not remember whether the color palette associated with the image was taken from Tikkurila’s actual colors, probably not. The image has not been cropped afterwards either. In my opinion, the framing straight out of the camera works perfectly as it is. Fresh.

The article is AI-translated from Finnish.