Bill Pierce
Well-known
I got a question about setting up a formal portrait studio. Any empty space from a room with the furniture moved to one side or the garage with the car parked in the driveway can be a portrait studio. What makes it a portrait studio is a background. That can be anything from a roll of seamless paper to the professionally painted canvas backgrounds of different sizes from folks like Savage and Westcott. I use to go to the hardware store and buy canvas drop clothes and paint them myself. I’m still using ones that were painted 35 years ago. I even painted backgrounds on rolls of seamless, but those didn’t make it into old age.
You can use any camera. I’ve shot studio portraits with a range of cameras from 35mm cameras and their digital equivalents to 8x10 view cameras.
What you do need is lights. Window light is good, but always changing, sort of like those good friends that are wonderful but unreliable. Big studio strobes are overkill with today’s small cameras, especially if you want a portrait of a single person that has shallow depth of field. (That said, I have a 3200 ws Broncolor that belonged to Richard Avedon that is great not only for shooting large format film, but doesn’t even strain to provide the small f/stops that group portraits demand.) But what gets used the most in my studio is continuous light, an affordable quartz light bounced into a big umbrella. Ross Lowel was a cinematographer who designed a number of small, versatile quartz units for location work. I’ve talked to DP’s who have said their location trucks are still the same size, but the lights in them are now much smaller. One or two Lowel Totalights into a large inexpensive umbrella (You’re not taking it on location and testing its durability.) is going to provide a lot of light. It’s a broad, soft like that you see in much Irving Penn’s work, and it’s positioning is much less critical that a smaller source with sharp shadow edges. As you work in a studio more, you may turn to a smaller key light and add background, fill and hair lights that marked the work of exceptional photographers like George Hurrell who was the absolute master of the Hollywood portrait. But one large source, a big umbrella or a light bounced of any large, light colored surface, can let you concentrate on and deal with the subject, which, after all, is the important thing in portraiture.
I hope that’s an answer to the question. Added contributions from other folks who shoot studio portraits much appreciated. Further questions from those who didn’t realize the photographic potential of their garage always welcome.
You can use any camera. I’ve shot studio portraits with a range of cameras from 35mm cameras and their digital equivalents to 8x10 view cameras.
What you do need is lights. Window light is good, but always changing, sort of like those good friends that are wonderful but unreliable. Big studio strobes are overkill with today’s small cameras, especially if you want a portrait of a single person that has shallow depth of field. (That said, I have a 3200 ws Broncolor that belonged to Richard Avedon that is great not only for shooting large format film, but doesn’t even strain to provide the small f/stops that group portraits demand.) But what gets used the most in my studio is continuous light, an affordable quartz light bounced into a big umbrella. Ross Lowel was a cinematographer who designed a number of small, versatile quartz units for location work. I’ve talked to DP’s who have said their location trucks are still the same size, but the lights in them are now much smaller. One or two Lowel Totalights into a large inexpensive umbrella (You’re not taking it on location and testing its durability.) is going to provide a lot of light. It’s a broad, soft like that you see in much Irving Penn’s work, and it’s positioning is much less critical that a smaller source with sharp shadow edges. As you work in a studio more, you may turn to a smaller key light and add background, fill and hair lights that marked the work of exceptional photographers like George Hurrell who was the absolute master of the Hollywood portrait. But one large source, a big umbrella or a light bounced of any large, light colored surface, can let you concentrate on and deal with the subject, which, after all, is the important thing in portraiture.
I hope that’s an answer to the question. Added contributions from other folks who shoot studio portraits much appreciated. Further questions from those who didn’t realize the photographic potential of their garage always welcome.
Ko.Fe.
Lenses 35/21 Gears 46/20
We had our garage half full with boat and another half with junk, plus recycling bins and garbage bags. After we sold the boat our elder daughter moved in and we have garage just full of the junk.
So, I have a question, how do I keep garage empty without... building another garage?
So, I have a question, how do I keep garage empty without... building another garage?
xayraa33
rangefinder user and fancier
We had our garage half full with boat and another half with junk, plus recycling bins and garbage bags. After we sold the boat our elder daughter moved in and we have garage just full of the junk.
So, I have a question, how do I keep garage empty without... building another garage?
You need to build multiple garden sheds in your backyard to store all your non actual car or truck garaged items, or just build one comfy large shed to be the studio.
Dogman
Veteran
Adding new storage space doesn't really work. You have more space to store crap so you get more crap to fill it up.
Mackinaw
Think Different
My garage studio. Spring/summer/fall only, it’s not heated, so is much too cold in the winter. I bought some inexpensive strobes (mainly for film), and also use CFL continuous lighting when I shoot digital (just bump the ISO and dial in the proper color balance for the CFL bulbs). The backdrop I bought at some camera store many years back. The backdrop hanger I made myself. Not very elegant, but it works well.
Jim B.
Jim B.