Corporate photography in Oak Brook and along I-88
More headquarters per square foot than almost anywhere else in suburban Chicago, and most of them belong to brands with marketing departments. We photograph on site, in your own building.
Oak Brook and Oakbrook Terrace together carry a little over eleven million square feet of office space, laid out along 22nd Street, Roosevelt Road, Butterfield Road and Route 83 with direct access to I-88. The volume is not the interesting number. The concentration of actual headquarters is. Ace Hardware opened its new headquarters on Jorie Boulevard in 2023. TreeHouse Foods, Portillo's, Blistex and Lions Clubs International are all based here. These are consumer brands with marketing teams, which is a different client from a back office with a thousand seats.
The skyline gives the area two photogenic buildings. Oakbrook Terrace Tower, designed by Helmut Jahn, runs thirty one stories and is the tallest building in Illinois outside Chicago. Oak Brook 22 on 22nd Street is a pair of identical eleven story towers joined by a single story link, with Michael Jordan's restaurant on the ground floor. Further east along I-88 the corridor continues through Downers Grove, where the Esplanade at Locust Point spreads two million square feet across a hundred acres at the I-88 and I-355 interchange and Advocate Health Care runs its headquarters, and out to Lisle where Navistar sits on Navistar Drive.
Where Oak Brook and the East West Corridor works
Almost every session happens on site, in your own building. Knowing the room before I arrive is part of what keeps the day on schedule.
22nd Street and Oak Brook 22
Two identical eleven story towers joined at the base, with retail underneath and direct I-88 access. Twenty minutes to O'Hare, twenty five to Midway, which matters when executives are flying in for the shoot rather than walking down a corridor.
Oakbrook Terrace Tower, Route 83 at Roosevelt
Helmut Jahn, thirty one stories, the tallest building in Illinois outside Chicago. Worth building a portrait around rather than treating as a backdrop, and the lobby is a genuine asset on a gray day.
Jorie Boulevard
Ace Hardware's headquarters, opened in 2023. New purpose-built corporate space photographs well, and a recently completed building is usually a company that has not refreshed its imagery yet.
Butterfield Road
The workhorse spine. Drake Oak Brook Office Park, Oak Brook Office Center and One Lincoln Centre sit along it, carrying the professional services and mid-market tenants that make up the bulk of the district.
Esplanade at Locust Point, Downers Grove
Two million square feet across a hundred acres at the I-88 and I-355 interchange, with buildings joined by skywalks. Advocate Health Care runs its headquarters here. The skywalk system means a two building day does not involve anybody going outside in February.
Lisle and the eastern corridor
Navistar on Navistar Drive, plus the office parks that trail east toward Yorktown. The quieter end of I-88 and usually the easiest logistics of the whole corridor.
What Oak Brook and the East West Corridor is built on
The sectors that define this market, and what each one usually needs.
Consumer brands and franchising
Ace Hardware, TreeHouse Foods, Portillo's and Blistex all run headquarters here, alongside Lions Clubs International. Oak Brook has been a consumer brand address since long before McDonald's left it.
The work most like ours: brand films, campaign video and library photography made to a brief, for teams that already know what a shot list is.
Healthcare administration
Advocate Health Care moved its headquarters to Downers Grove and runs it from the Esplanade. The corridor carries a good deal of the administrative side of Illinois healthcare rather than the clinical side.
Executive and leadership portraits, plus internal communication film for organizations whose staff are spread across dozens of sites.
Professional services
Accounting, insurance brokerage, construction management and law fill the Butterfield Road and Oakbrook Terrace buildings, serving the headquarters around them.
Attorney, advisor and partner bios matched across an office, with new hires added later without a reshoot.
Manufacturing and industrial
Navistar in Lisle and a spread of industrial tenants along the eastern corridor keep this from being a purely white collar market.
Plant and process film, engineer portraits, and facility imagery for recruiting and investor material.
What we make in Oak Brook and the East West Corridor
Headshot programs are usually the first project. They are rarely the only one.
Corporate headshot programs
Whole teams photographed on site in one or two days, to one standard.
Learn MoreExecutive portraits
Leadership portraits with the weight a headquarters expects.
Learn MoreBrand films and campaign video
Directed, filmed and edited by one person, from scope to delivery.
Learn MoreCommercial and product photography
For the consumer brands that make up this district.
Learn MoreRecruiting and culture video
Made on site, in the building people would actually work in.
Learn MoreConference and event coverage
Sessions, keynotes and headshot booths at corporate events.
Learn MoreWhy it matters in Oak Brook and the East West Corridor
McDonald's left Oak Brook for Fulton Market in 2018 after forty seven years, and that departure still shapes how the district talks about itself. What it did not do is empty the place. The headquarters that remain are brand businesses whose marketing teams commission photography and film as a matter of course, and they are close enough together that a single trip can cover two or three of them. That is exactly the kind of density that makes an out of town production day economic rather than extravagant.
Buildings in Oak Brook and the East West Corridor with their own page
Each has its own page: what the building is, who is there, and what a session in it involves.
Oakbrook Terrace Tower
1 Tower Lane, Oakbrook Terrace, IL
Thirty one stories of Helmut Jahn glass at Route 83 and Roosevelt Road, and the tallest building in Illinois outside Chicago. One elevator core serves the whole tower, which is what the schedule gets built around.
Oak Brook 22
1211 and 1301 West 22nd Street, Oak Brook, IL
Twin eleven story towers on 22nd Street joined by a single story link, with a restaurant on the ground floor and I-88 at the door. The link means a program covering both towers never has to go outdoors in January.
Esplanade at Locust Point, Downers Grove
1431 Opus Place, Downers Grove, IL
About two million square feet on a hundred acres at the I-88 and I-355 interchange, with the buildings joined by a skywalk system. One room can serve three buildings, because nobody has to go outside to reach it.
Other addresses in and around Oak Brook and the East West Corridor
Landmarks that orient the district. Sessions happen at your own office, wherever in it you are.
What every session includes
The same standard in every city, because it is the same photographer in every city.
Direction people relax into
Most people dread being photographed. I demonstrate, they mirror, and the guarded expression is gone in about thirty seconds.
Real-time review
Every frame appears on a tethered monitor as we shoot, so nobody leaves the room wondering how it went.
One consistent standard
The same lighting and framing used in every other city you operate in, so the team page holds together.
Professional retouching
Every final image is edited personally. You look like yourself, on a good day.
Photography and video in one visit
Filmed in 4K, which means a production day hands back a still library as well as the film.
On site at your office
The full setup travels. A conference room or an open corner is enough, and your team never leaves the building.
Henry is based in St. Louis and grew up on the North Shore, so Chicago is not a market he had to learn. Oak Brook programs are scheduled as full days, and the travel is quoted as a line item rather than buried in a per-person rate.
Chicago companies we work with
Two firms with Chicago offices are already clients
Johnson + Krol is a Chicago labor and employment firm, and its attorneys are our clients. When the firm opened an office in another state, the brief was to match the standard already running on its Chicago bios: green canvas, relaxed clothing, warm frontal light. That session was photographed at the firm's St. Louis area office in Des Peres. Matching an established Chicago standard frame for frame, from another state, is a harder test than starting from scratch would have been.
IWR North America is a building enclosure contractor founded in St. Louis in 1895. The company describes itself as headquartered in the Midwest with satellite offices in Dallas and Chicago. We built the headshot program that runs across IWR and its parent holding company, MHS Legacy Group: more than thirty people on one standard, with new hires still matching the originals.
Sample work from client sessions elsewhere. It is the standard a session in Oak Brook and the East West Corridor would be held to.
Trusted by leading organizations
Oak Brook and the East West Corridor questions
What teams in this market usually ask first.
Can you cover more than one building in a day?
Do you work with consumer brands on product and campaign material?
Is Oakbrook Terrace Tower a viable location for portraits?
Do you cover Downers Grove and Lisle too?
What do you need from us on the day?
Planning something in Oak Brook and the East West Corridor?
Tell me the headcount, the buildings and the dates. A proposal follows a short conversation, and questions are answered within one business day.