Is your dream studio a large, airy building with natural light streaming through the windows, backdrops of every imaginable color and huge amounts of lighting equipment? This would be great if you have unlimited funds, but this is not a practical way to start a small portrait studio.
You can consistently produce excellent portraits of friends, family, or clients with a small living space that you convert into a studio.
Here are some of the things that you need to consider.
BACKGROUNDS:
Backgrounds can be something as simple as a blank white wall or as expensive as hand-painted muslin and canvas backdrops. Large canvas tarps like those that painters use to protect floors, are ideal for spraying or splattering paint in various colors. This is a good way to provide a variety of backdrops in different colors for a nominal sum of money. Mismatched paint (almost all paint stores goof every now and then) can be purchased for a fraction of the cost of a custom color.
BACKGROUND SUPPORT:
Background supports can be permanent or temporary. Two closet shelf brackets nailed high on the wall about five to six feet apart can hold a dowel with a sheet of seamless paper that can be rolled down when you need the backdrop.
Vertical stands with a horizontal support between them can provide a greater range of mobility and can be stored in a closet when not in use. Extra light stands can serve very well for this type of arrangement. In addition, background stands can be built from 1-1/2" PVC pipe. With a few lengths of PVC, a few "elbows" and "T's", you can have a custom background stand of any size. If the pieces of PVC are just fitted together and not glued, the entire stand can be disassembled and stored in a closet.
LIGHTING:
Lighting is the most challenging part of a home studio. The object of lighting is to control light. One way to do this is to control unwanted light. Any windows near your 'studio' site will tend to give you unwanted highlights or compete with your main light source. You will need to block the windows with some type of black material so that there is no light entering the room from the windows.
Photofloods and quartz lights are the least expensive forms of lighting but they have one major disadvantage…they are hot.
Instead of pointing these hot lights directly at your subject (which is quite uncomfortable), there are a couple of things that you can do. Try bouncing the light off the ceiling. You will lose two to three f-stops when you bounce light. Another thing that can be tried is to use a diffusion panel. This will lessen the harshness of the light by spreading it out over a larger area and will decrease the temperature of the light on the subject.
SETTING UP THE STUDIO:
When your home studio is set up, you will need to have a space of about six or seven feet between your subject and the background in order to avoid unwanted shadows. If this distance is not possible, try placing the lights higher than your subject is. This will cause any shadows to cast downward where your subject hides them.
LIMITATIONS:
You can take a variety of portraits that are of acceptable quality in a home studio. However, you usually cannot take three-quarter of full-length portraits because ceilings are too low. Also, do not attempt to use a wide-angle lens as this produces a very unattractive portrait and tends to distort facial features. Stick to head-and-shoulders portraits and you will have attractive images!
Resources:
http://www.ehow.com/how_1358_set-photo-studio.html
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=25148
http://www.graphic-design.com/photographic/studio/index.html
http://www.free-stockphotos.com/studio-lighting-tip-setting-up-home-studio-for-product-photography/
http://www.forphotography.com/how-tos/homestudio.html
November 5, 2008
