We recently had the opportunity to work with photographer Francois Panchard, who photographed the Stenheim Ultime Two SX loudspeaker for The Absolute Sound's September 2025 issue. Stenheim are a Swiss company, and due to the size and cost of the speakers, we decided it was best to shoo them onsite in Switzerland at Stenheim's facility, and remotely art direct the shoot as far as possible. Luckily, everyone involved was on the same page when it came to knowing exactly what we wanted to achieve, so after a few rounds of emails, lists, and a couple of sketches, Stenheim sent us the images straight from camera to use in layout. Although we had a not-insignificant amount of retouching to get the photos to final, we always build time into our production schedule for cover story photo retouch whether we shoot in studio or remotely, and will go through a couple of rounds of page layout using unfinished images for placement.

Take a look at the final layout with Francois' photography below.