Converting a Garage into a Studio Part 1

Last Tuesday I started the conversion of my double garage into a photographic studio and I thought I would share the journey that many of us take as that next step from working at home and shooting clients on location, to having a studio where clients can come to us for a portrait session.

This is shot of the garage taken with my iPhone late at night after a long day of moving unwanted junk to the recycling centre and power washing the floor. You can just see the edges of the walls are still wet and there are 2 puddles left in the middle of the floor. You can’t really get a sense of the space from the image above, but its approximately 450 square feet of empty space. Sounds big for a home studio and I guess it is pretty big, but that depends on what or who you want to photograph in it to whether its big enough. Its all relative I guess…

A little back story first of all…

I have been fortunate enough to work in 3 studios and shoot in a further 40 studios as well as train photographers in their own studios. Which probably brings the number to around 100 studios that I have visited over the years. I am in the unique position of probably seeing everything from a studio that are 6 feet wide by 12 long to studios that you could park a couple of double decker buses in with space to spare. So I have a pretty good grasp of the space required to make a portrait studio work.

The funny thing is as I stared at the empty space the other night. I knew I was going to fill it up with all the other things that go along with a studio, which are props, backgrounds, lighting, seating, work area, heating, storage, make-up area, and all of a sudden 450 square feet does not feel like a lot. But I also know from experience that you end up using the space you have, because lets face it thats all you have…

I worked with another photographer for a number of years providing training and consultancy on the workflow side of things. He went from having a really sweet home setup to moving to prominent centre of town location with more space than was really needed. Don’t get me wrong, the cavernous high-key setup was impressive to say the least and the viewing, changing, reception rooms, and staff facilities that were spread across 2 industrial units in total were just amazing even to visit let alone work from…

BUT, that same photographer left all that space within a year or so and went back to his home setup, because the cost of having such a space were huge and at the end of the day the photographer realised that the public did not come to him for his shiny floors and the aircraft hanger like studio space. They came for family photo’s and memories of a great day. These are not provided for by the space or the environment, but by the people that work in that space and provide the service that make the memories. This was a lesson learned for me and one that I am sharing with you. But its also one that I nearly forgot about it.

The Ego Has Landed…

Late last year I was also nearly seduced by having a centre of town location myself and I was probably less than 48 hours away from taking on what was a relatively successful portrait studio that already had a good reputation. But when I thought about I knew it was all wrong for a number of reasons.

Firstly, I would be riding the wave of someone else’s reputation to a certain extent and when I dug a little deeper I discovered that due to poor management that reputation was not as sound as first thought. Secondly the studio space, workrooms, and facilities were designed around the way that studio worked and not how I worked. So I would have either had to of changed everything at great expense or adapted my own work ethic and style to fit the space. Finally, the cost of leasing the premises was equal to having a substantial mortgage over and above my own home that I already lived in. Thats actually equal to a lot of stress and pressure to make money. Which in turn damages the photographic product, because in my view as a creative person. Stress, pressure and artistic endeavours do not mix very well and lead to a very manufactured, formula based product. Fine, if your goal is to run a business and make money for yourself or other people. But if you are like me and you want to make cool images that are different from every other high-key “Venture” style image out there. This was not the way forward.

So my own ego came down with a big bump! and I got REAL, as they say… Thankfully in the nick of time as the recession kicked in about 1 week later.

My point in telling you this is that if you are building your own studio you need to decide how you are going to work the space and in turn this kind of dictates who and what you shoot. Try to make the most of both as this will then in turn dictate you product range, client base, and eventually how much money you make! I am fortunate enough that this studio will have dual purpose from the outset. As it is to be both a training and portrait studio.

So what is a Studio?

Now there is a question and it has a really simple answer. Its a space in which you can control the lighting environment and take pictures. Its not even 4 walls, because a studio can be setup anywhere. On a more practical level a studio is a room in which you can base yourself, control the lighting and make great images consistently.

The trick is how you use that space and too many times I have seen great studios spaces wasted by the fact that the backgrounds are all in the same place and the space itself is not used to its full potential. I am personally not going to be trapped into having the background always in the same place and I am going to make use of as much of the space as possible as I need to be flexible enough to demonstrate various setups as well as use them for real portrait sessions.

So in my studio I am embracing the space and keep the large garage door in place as this gives me flexibility for daylight shots and bringing in larger items to photograph. I am also keeping the walls bare but painted and the floor will also be painted and large rugs placed down so that things can be juggled around to suit the assignment or training session.

It will be both comfortable, practical and I have a few tricks up my sleeve that allow you to have multiple setups on the go for individual portraits making for a fast, creative and flexible series of shots. Which in turn can be fun, creative, but also profitable.

The studio is going to be many things. Make-up room, changing room, storage space, preview room, training studio, meeting room, reception area, and finally workroom. So therefore it has to be adaptable and ready to be turned around to any of these things in minutes and over the coming weeks I am going to give you a behind the scenes look as how I setup my studio and bring together all the knowledge and experience of the other studios that I have worked in and visited in the last 10 years.

The Big Clear Out

When you move home a double garage space is a very tempting place to put all your boxes and junk whilst you organise your new house and yes this is exactly what we did. The downside is all that junk has to be put somewhere else and this has taken much longer than planned. The garage also was filled with spare mono-block bricks that needed cleared out as well as more concrete and cement dust than I can mention.

On Tuesday, Greg and I started the big clean up operation and we tried in vain to sweep out and then suck up all the dust and accumulated debris. This is did not work as all we ended up doing was pushing it up into the air for it to land back down a little later in a different spot. So if you have a new garage and you are about to embark on the same adventure, then go straight to “Plan-B”. The power hose!

The shots of me power washing the concrete floor probably give you a better sense of the space that I have got to play with, but trust me when I say it will rapidly go when all the gear gets put inside. The next stage is to seal the concrete floor and the sealing so that the can both be painted either a dark grey or more likely black. Then it will be the turn of the 3 walls.

In the next part we will hopefully have all the painting completed and we can then look at how the studio will be heated and decorated with soft furnishings. >

Related screencasts & articles.

• Converting a Garage into a Studio Part 2 Fri 30 Oct 2009
• Its time to make mistakes again! Mon 03 May 2010
• Guess who popped by for a visit? Mon 19 Apr 2010

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