Avon Health Center: care team group portraits in Avon

Avon Health Center is a family-owned skilled nursing center offering short-term rehabilitation and long-term care. Its website recounts that Leonard J. Schwartz purchased the business in 1974 and expanded it in 1975.

For a place where people live and recover, the staff are the heart of the story. We photographed team group portraits for The Valley Book, using three different settings so the set reads as a place as well as a group.

That history is a reminder of how long a care organization can be part of a community. A team portrait is a way to show who carries that work forward today, in a form that fits a guide, a brochure or a web page.

Across the three portraits, changes in the background give the same group a different emphasis. The entrance includes the center’s name, the gazebo opens up the setting, and the interior brings furniture and warmer tones into view.

Learn more: Our legacy of care and compassion, Avon Health Center

In one frame the team stands outdoors in front of a white gazebo. The gazebo's structure helps frame the group and gives the portrait an open, friendly setting.

In the other the team is inside a warmly furnished room. Warm furnishings tell a reader that the interior is meant to feel comfortable. Seen together, the outdoor and indoor frames show both sides of the center: the grounds and the rooms.

Each of the three portraits is upright, which suits the way a team can be arranged in rows and still fill the frame. The consistent format also makes the set easy to lay out on a page: any of the three can lead a feature, and the other two can support it.