CharleyL
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 p.1 #3 · Every day on the street | |
When I first started and wanted a studio I was in no position financially to even own a studio. I raised 4 children and lived in a smaller house that barely met our needs and not photography, but I "made do" anyway. I became interested in photography in the early 1950's and my last 3 years of high school I was a Yearbook Photographer, after a teacher saw my photos that I had brought in to show my friends. I used the school's Graphlex Press Camera and got pretty good with it, doing mostly sports and club groups for the Yearbook.
Lacking my own studio I ended up pushing all of my living room furniture aside, hanging an ironed bed sheet (a significant setup delay) over the French doors to my porch, and snapped away. For lighting, I had several of the reflector clip lights that are available in hardware stores, and by changing bulb wattages, "20, 40, 60, and 100 watt filament bulbs", and I by mounting these lights to DIY wooden stands or to the edge of the tables I found that I could get acceptable results, though not meeting today's standards. Distance was used to finely adjust the brightness between bulb sizes, and I had a pair of leather gloves to handle the hot bulb changing. I used a light meter to get the result that I wanted. Filters for the lights were sheets of onion skin or very thin white paper held in place over the light reflectors with clothes pins and tape. I was able to get some pretty impressive shots using this very crude method and it didn't cost much at all. The down side was that I had to drag all of my photo gear out of the back of one of our closets, set it all up, and then after the shoot, pack it all back in the closet and put all of the furniture back where it had been. I also used 200 or 400 ISO film when doing this, and shot the whole roll or rolls during each shoot. Shooting with film is terrible when compared with our digital technology, but it's what we had.
Today, I have a relatively small 19 X 26' studio upstairs in my present home, after I realized that it would make an acceptable, but small studio, and I started the conversion of this space from the former 2nd master bedroom suite into a photo/video studio. The space has been adequate, but I wish the ceiling height was 10 or 12' (not possible here, but maybe some day in a future more appropriate location). It has a bathroom just off the shooting room and the hair/make-up/break area is in the large space at the top of the stairs that's also adjacent to the shooting room. Off the shooting room there is also a walk-in closet where I now store my extensive pile of studio photo gear and some props.
I completed this studio about 5 1/2 years ago, and just in time for COVID, so it didn't get much use for portraiture for the first two years. I don't use it as a business anyway. I keep myself busy experimenting with light and taking unusual photo/video shots that not every photographer would even try doing. I'm now doing mostly still life type photo shoots, but I have all that is necessary for a portrait shoot, still life, or video shoot all in place and ready for a relatively sudden change to do a different type of shoot. It's all been carefully designed to allow quickly changing the studio from portraiture, to still life, or to video. I shoot mostly friends and family, and sometimes their close friends, and I don't charge for this, except to hope that they will donate for covering the printing costs. I'm 83 and still interested in the process of photography, but now it's just a serious and out-of-control hobby. My other serious hobby also out-of-control hobby is woodworking, but that's in a separate small barn across the driveway from my home, though I have made a few short videos out there.
If anyone wants to know more about how I designed and built my studio in what had been a former master bedroom suite, I will be happy to provide more details. You don't need a space as wide as this for all but the video work, but it helps to have a place to put things within easy reach and just out of visibility of the shots.
Charley
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