Hafer designs for OFS Brands

You might remember last fall when we featured the lovely Hafer Design in a client spotlight Journal. At that point, we were hired to photograph a hospice home Hafer had recently designed. As with all returning clients, we are so thankful to work with Hafer again, this time showcasing OFS Brands furniture.

OFS is a family owned furniture distribution company in southern Indiana. Although our work on this shoot showcases their products in an office setting, OFS also produces furniture for the areas of healthcare and education. Among other factors, OFS cares so much about their customer satisfaction, they built an equestrian center to give their big city clients the experience of small town, rural Indiana (oh and Hafer worked on that too!)

The Studio13 team packed up the car and went down to where OSF was founded: a little place called Huntingburg Indiana. We were hired to photograph a renovation to their corporate headquarters which featured a new café in the employee break area, common spaces for collaborating, an open concept desk area, and a 2-story floating plant wall (or if you want to be fancy a “hydroponic wall”). As a previous blog once said, Hafer’s design is simply sublime!

Just because the design was so magnificent doesn’t mean that it was simple to photograph. First of all, the hydroponic wall was two stories tall which is a challenge itself. Not only that, but there was only 10 to 15 feet of floor space in front of that gorgeous wall to set lights and shoot it. This means that we had to cram all of our lights and a human behind a camera in a rather small space (and keep it out of the frame at the same time!).

Also, even though this section was newly renovated, the surrounding areas were original to the building, which gave off a very different vibe than the new section. This one factor introduced three or four different colors temperatures of light into the same shot. While trying to photograph this space, we had to capture the beauty we saw with our eyes while avoiding the small details the camera could perceive that threw off the images. With so many different color temperatures there was no way to filter everything to neutral in the camera. That caused some stress!

This job is the perfect example of how the “money” shots we all love don’t always come easy. The team ended up with some gorgeous work for our client–but not without a lot of hard work, adjusting, and readjusting during the shooting processes and then some magic back in the post production lab were all necessary for a beautiful final product.

As they say….if it were easy, anyone could do it!