What Is a Studio?

Two small things first: I've just added a bunch of new Featured Comments to the "Bare Bulb" post. Be sure to check 'em out.

Second, I should be done with the Baker's Dozen: Black-and-White" post in time to publish it on Friday, so I can leave it at the top of TOP for the weekend. Coming right up, at long last.

I wanted to mention that the most fun I ever had with lighting was when I shared studio space with my old friend Paul Kennedy at the Paul Kennedy Studio in Takoma Park, Maryland. We were four photographers with independent businesses and shared space; I mostly used the big, beautiful darkroom, earning most of my living as a custom B&W printer. I made exhibition prints for professional photographers, galleries, and museums, and high quality prints for reproduction. I loved darkroom work and there were many and various challenges in the jobs that came in, so it was a fun time for me.

I had a bunch of Photoflex LitePanels, which were 39 x 72" fabric sheets with elastic bands on all four corners. Here's a link to the most useful kind. Rather than buy the expensive pre-made frames for them, I made a bunch out of PVC plumbers pipe. To assemble them, they simply press-fit together; then I could knock them all down and throw the bits in a bag. What let them stand upright was just an inverted "T" shape at one end.

I used these both in the studio and on location. The diffuser panels made the same kind of light (albeit weaker in intensity) as a giant soft box (the point of a soft box is to contain the light and sent it all out the diffuse front panel, rather than waste it some of it on reflection as you do with an umbrella or with a freestanding LitePanel). The opaque panels could be used as gobos (to block light) or as backgrounds—I shot many portraits and headshots with either a black or white LitePanel (same kind—one side is black, one side is white) as my background. Of course I used the white and silver panels as generously-sized reflectors.

As every pro and almost no amateur knows, a large diffuser panel on a frame is also very useful on location in harsh midday direct sunlight...on stands at each end (have two people hold it) so that it's over the head of your subject with the sunlight falling on the top of it, and you get beautiful diffused light on your subject with no harsh shadows. Instant perfect "open shade."

These panels were highly useful on location shoots...I went into a lot of offices to do headshots and executive portraits. But the most fun was simply playing around with them in the studio. (I did lots of studio portraits, mainly of individuals and couples.) It was fun to figure out how to use the various light panels to "mimic" many lights while actually only using one or two. For example, with a single light, you could set up a diffuser panel on one side of your subject as a main light, and set the light up as such an angle that unblocked light would fall on a reflector panel on the other side of the subject. That created the same effect as two lights, one diffused and one reflected, using just one main light. The problem was intensity, which would be much less a problem with today's digital cameras.

To really have fun with lighting, of course, you need a "room-sized accessory"...a studio. And what's a studio? Basically, just a large empty room. Everything else in a studio, like built-in sweeps or seamless paper support systems and so forth, is just icing on the cake.

One thing that can help a lot is having beams or girders on the ceiling so you can clamp stuff up there. The only time I was a full-time assistant, the pro had constructed an enormous barn-sized concrete room with a huge wall in the middle on rollers. The idea was that he could have two sets going at the same time, one on each side of the wall, or, when he wanted to use the whole room, he could roll the moving wall to one side and use the whole space. He also had beams on the ceiling so he could clamp things anywhere and not have to hang lights from tall stands. The ceiling was 20 feet high, though, so getting the lights up there wasn't a picnics for us assistants.

You know what would make a great studio? A prefab garage with no center supports and a high ceiling. You'd have a lot of space for human-sized projects, a concrete floor, and those exposed ceiling joists would be great for clamping things to.

I don't work with lights any more and it's been ages since I've been in a studio. And of course, as in that nice video Wolfgang linked to yesterday, lots of photographers build portable "studios" on location. But for the right photographer, a nice big empty room to work in—a studio—is a highly desirable photographic accessory.

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dave Jenkins: "All this talk about studios makes me nostalgic for the great space I had through most of the '90s in downtown Chattanooga. The shooting room was about 20x30 feet with a 12-foot ceiling, a large darkroom with a King Concepts film processor, and a nice space for offices and client meetings. All for $600 a month. Those were good days. However, by 2000, most of my business had shifted to location work and the money I made from having a studio was just about enough to pay the overhead. So sadly, I closed it. But I still miss it. I'm mostly out of commercial photography these days, working on books and magazine articles, but I loved it while I did it."

John Camp: "I just built a studio with three sections—writing, music, painting/photography. Moved in last month. There were some constraints. I'm in an environmentally sensitive area, so I was restricted to the footprint of the previous building, which was not optimal. It is, however, the best place I've ever had to work. (We call it 'The Workshop' because 'Studio' sounds too corksniffer-y.) In fact, I never want to leave it.

"BUT: a studio is more than a big empty space. If you're serious about it, you have to think about things like electric outlets. I have way more than the code calls for, and I could still use more. In places where I had four-plug outlets put in, I could have used eight...you also have to think about exactly what you'll need for plumbing and HVAC, security and storage.

"Big open spaces are subject to bad light and cold spots, so you really have to think about those things. When your lighting guys figure out how much light you need, it's not a bad idea in my experience to greatly exceed that. I did, and I still have a desk lamp.

"If you work with models, you also have to think about privacy concerns.

"I have a big pre-fab garage at my cabin. I no longer track the prices, but I think I paid something like $45,000 for a steel pre-fab set on a concrete slab with all electric wiring and hookup included, as well as the grading needed for the slab (which was also included in that price.) Arrived in a semi-truck and put up in a week. You could park six cars in in it; we do hang stuff (like dead deer) from the cross-members. Twenty-foot peaked roof, the better to shed snow. I don't remember the exact size but it could be something like 40x40. It's not heated, and heating would be expensive in colder areas simply because the space is so large. It's also hard to keep clean, so you'd have to think about things like what kind of flooring you'd want (polished concrete is relatively cheap and great, and can be tinted.)

"I'd say after a lifetime of writing in places like the basement and the unused third bedroom, that a workshop is a terrific luxury. Every artist or craftsman should try to get one, or find one. I don't know if you're interested, but I think a 'studio' series of posts could go on for days...."

Frank Grygier: "Dean Collins comes to mind when you talk about using panels. He worked his magic using one Metz flashgun with numerous panels and mirrors to control the light. I watch his videos every so often for inspiration."

Eamon Hickey: "Your memories of experimenting with LitePanels and seeing how much you could do with a single light sparked a stone-age memory of my own. Didn't a photographer named Dean Collins become famous-among-photodawgs in the 1980s with a series of instructional VHS tapes on lighting techniques wherein he regularly mimicked six-light, 15,000 watt-second setups with not much more than a penlight and a piece of scrap foamcore? That's how I remember it anyway. The camera store where I worked had a set of his tapes that we rented out, and one of the perks for a young, very underpaid photodawg like me was the ability to take them home for free if they weren't rented out. I learned a lot about light from those tapes. Or thought I did. Since I'm evidently in a nostalgic mood, I'll throw in a shot from 1990 or so that I made under the influence of those tapes, using a Photoflex LitePanel and a single light (outdoors). I was trying to copy something I'd seen in a magazine (not such a bad way to learn)."

Gordon T Cahill: "As the other photographers in my area have been closing their studio spaces, over the last five years, I've been selectively buying their gear and improving mine. Like you I loved my darkroom but now my studio is my fun space to be. Although the market has constricted, because I'm the last studio in town my usage has increased a bit. Although a permanent space is nice it's actually easy, with the cool and cheap gear available today to have either a quick garage/room conversion or a completely portable studio. About 50% of my headshot work is on location and I can set up a reasonable studio with some flip-out panels and a pair of Godox lights in just 15 minutes."

Comments

[David Brown]

Couldn’t agree more. This is what I’m missing. I have plenty of gear, including lights and stands and booms, etc., but no place to work with them right now. (I even have a darkroom and an adequate computer station.) I may end up using my own garage and the cars will just have to sit out for a while. Oh, the sacrifices we make for art.

[William Schneider]

I'd like to expand your definition of a studio to something even smaller than you describe. I often photograph small objects in my cramped woodworking shop. It has a steel ceiling low enough to touch.

I use strong magnets to hang clamp-on lights and the PVC framed Photoflex diffusion panels from the ceiling. The panels and seamless paper nestle up against the ceiling when I'm doing shop work. The diffusers and seamless take just a few minutes to deploy when I want to photograph. The low-tech lights are a mix of daylight LED and CFL bulbs in cheap hardware store reflectors. The magnets are easily movable to change the lighting.

This animated GIF file shows the Photoflex panels in shooting mode and in wood shop mode...

Here are a couple of sample photos made in my "studio".

I use the smaller 39" x 39" Photoflex diffusion LitePanels available from B&H for under $25 each.

While not as functional as a studio in a larger space, it lets me explore lighting and have a lot of fun.

Bill Schneider
Claustrophobia Studios & Woodworking

[Wolfgang Lonien]

Glad that you enjoyed the video Michael. And I had to laugh about Bill's 'Claustrophobia Studios' - in my case it's mostly our living room which gets used as a studio from time to time, with one of the studio strobes hanging over the dining room table on a boom stand with a 20" white beauty dish (Jinbei) most of the time, for quick portraits across the table, or 'table top' photos. Mike showed an example portrait once, to demonstrate a stepped-down Olympus 45mm/1.8 lens.

[Steve Higgins]

@MrSscneider:

Luxury! My 'studio' work is done on a 14" x 19" table in my living room, lit by a large window and a small (20" x 16") white reflector.

A sample?

Title: And the difference is?

[Bryan Geyer]

Bill---I always admire demonstrations of creative response to cramped quarters, so nice going; looks good.

Don't forget that you can often put a polarizer to effective use when doing small product photography. It would knock that reflection off the shiny metal front on the wood plane and generally enhance detail and color saturation. (It would also cost you significant light loss; you'd have to compensate.)

Bryan Geyer

[Michael Mejia]

The studios is not so much a space and equipment but also a state of mind; a space dedicated to one' specific use. By analogy, many bathrooms become a darkroom, that is until your wife wants to bathe. My old laundry room, no longer used, blacked out, with tables, plumbing, venting, lights permanently placed, and equipped; now THAT is a darkroom.

Yet it is not the fancy-schmanciness that brings the darkroom to form, but the dedication of space. With the dedication of space it is, of course, always there and near ready.

In like fashion a studio anticipates photography as a matter of course, unlike my dining room table. It is steady, controllable, with understood capabilities and claimed for use, allowing things to be left standing for further work as time allows or dictates. It takes a place in the mind as a locus for posibility and limitations. It becomes the repository of experience and growth.

It is also a great place for a party.