A “Home” Studio

A “Home” Studio

by William Lulow

Whenever I talk about the business of photography, I inevitably include the differences between running a professional photographic studio in a different location from a residence. I have had a home/studio for several years now in what still seems like a “new” location. I have actually conducted my business both ways; in my home as well as in a strictly business location to which I had to commute each day. There are pros and cons with each. One of the benefits of operating your business in a separate location is that you can leave it every night. You decide when you want your day to end, you leave and lock the door behind you. This is what I did when my business was located in New York City’s “photo district.” It has its benefits because you learn to separate your “down time” from the hours during which you work. When you operate your business from your residence, it is often difficult to make this separation. You sometimes find yourself working much later at night than you would have at your non-residential location.

A few years ago, I made a determination that I needed to downsize my living environment. I owned a house for thirty years and did not want to deal with its maintenance myself any more. I also had certain requirements about my work environment. For many years I have had a much different clientele than when I was younger. It seemed that I no longer needed a large studio space because most of the clients I was getting more recently in my career wanted me to shoot on location at their premises. I just don’t do as much work as I used to that requires large studio space. So, I made my location “kit” much more portable. My clients had changed. I no longer needed to do big fashion oriented catalogs that required many backgrounds, props and facilities. However, I still needed the space do the few “studio shots” that I was still getting and I could always rent a larger space if the assignment called for it. That way, I was no longer paying overhead costs for space I didn’t need.

So, I began looking for an environment that would be comfortable enough to live in as well as to do the studio photographs for which I was already known. I knew I needed high ceilings and a space I could use as an office.

I found a loft apartment in Livingston, New Jersey that was closer to my grandchildren and that had enough space for me to do the occasional assignments that called for a studio setup. This is essentially how I began my business while I was still learning and assisting other photographers in the late 1970s. I had a large Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan, NY with 11 foot ceilings, which doubled very nicely as a residence and a studio. After about eight years of beginning my business there, I was finally able to move down to the photo district of West 22nd Street in NYC.

Having done business both ways, now that I am older and slowing down a bit, I have found it much easier to conduct sessions from my living quarters. Yes, I have to move a few chairs around to make some room from time to time, but overall, it has been much better for me to condense everything to one working/living space for the occasional studio shot I need to do.

I first learned my lighting and some studio operation skills from the famous Life Magazine photographer, Philippe Halsman. Halsman had an incredible duplex apartment right off Manhattan’s Central Park West. The lower floor was his studio space with very high ceilings, and his living quarters were one floor up, accessible from both inside the studio via a staircase and outside from the building’s elevator. When he finished his shots for the day, all he needed was to go upstairs to his apartment. That always seemed to me a rather ideal way to run the business. As long as you had enough room to do the shots you wanted, it was a great way for an artist to live. Halsman’s space was certainly no garret, however. Here is my living quarters set up as a studio:

It is just long and wide enough to accommodate a no-seam paper roll that would permit me to shoot a family of six, for example. The image above shows a half roll of gray no-seam. My current headshot clientele consists of one executive at a time, so this space is more than adequate. As you can see here, I have upgraded my lighting kit to include all monolights (all with extra batteries) so there are no wires or cords necessary. This greatly expands the portability of everything because now the kit fits neatly into one case.

When anyone comes to this space that I have now had for three years or so, after we do the shoot, I bring them up to the office where I have all the necessary components of good post-production (three printers, a scanner and a powerful enough computer to handle the large files that images create. We download all the images from the camera’s SDHC card and view them first in Adobe Bridge, then do the editing in Photoshop. All retouching is done on the spot and the client leaves with a flashdrive of everything we shoot as well as the edits.

People make their initial selections, I do the necessary retouching right on the spot for their approval with Adobe Photoshop, make a couple of quick 8x10s, process the invoice, make labels and then burn everything to a flashdrive which they take with them when they leave. It is a thorough and professional process which I am able to do from the confines of my living space. The fact that my office is in the upstairs portion of the loft makes it a bit easier to separate the “living” from the “photography,” but since this is how I first started, I have noticed that with all the new technology in the photography industry since the advent of computers, living with all of it has only helped give me the experience of more immersion. I really live with my art! I am reminded of Keith Richards’ book “Life,” an autobiography in which he describes some of his old techniques of basically “sleeping with his guitar” nearby so that if he got an inspiration in the middle of the night, he wouldn’t have to get dressed, get in his car and run down to the recording studio to get his ideas down on tape! Here’s an image I just saw one night out my window:

I would not have been able to capture a shot like this if I had my cameras locked up in a studio safe, the way I used to. So, there is some good that can come from living where you work, especially if you are in a “creative” business.

A typical portrait made in my apartment/studio recently, using a 5-light setup and my large, portrait umbrella as mainlight.

The home studio gives me an opportunity not only to regulate my time at work, but also to include valuable time for experimentation and creativity.