From the course: Portrait Photography: High School Seniors

Set up a portable studio

From the course: Portrait Photography: High School Seniors

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Set up a portable studio

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- [Instructor Voiceover] A lot of photographers think that they need a very big space, you know, a professional studio space. And actually, there was a time when I thought that too. However, the last 10 years or so, I've been working in here, which is, this is a townhouse I converted into a studio. And this room here, this shooting room, is 10 by 11 feet. And it works fantastic. Now I've done a few things to make it work. Let me give you a virtual tour of this room so you have some idea of how I get great senior portraits, when I have to shoot indoors, right here where I'm sitting right now. Now off to the side here, I have a window, window light. And you know, I like natural light. And one of the things that I look for in a shooting room is good natural light coming in. I probably have four or five hours of natural light a day, right here. Now what I like to do is add a little fill light, a lot of times, for the portraits. And what I'll do is I'll just use a reflector right here on this side. Now I have a variety of reflectors. If I have someone helping me, they can hold it and position it. Or I have the stand for it. Either way, it works fantastic. And most of the time, just with the main light coming in here, the reflector right here, I'm in very good shape. Now if I have to add a hair light, I can. And I have this wonderful backdrop. These poles, this backdrop set here, all collapse into a bag that fits in the back of my car. And on the poles, I have a few lights that I can use for the hair light. I have some shower hooks, which I use to hold the muslin backdrop. Now I do buy a real photographer's muslin backdrop. And it has the nice grommets that fit into the shower hooks. And I like to have three or four, if I can, just a couple different colors, so that whatever the subject is thinking, or depending on what they're wearing, or their skin tone, I can have a nice backdrop to go with it. And then of course, you have to have a stool, or you have to have a few stools. So I'm 6' 7" working in this 10 by 11 room, so my stool might be a little different than someone that I would use that's only 5' 2" or 5' 4". Other than that, this is it. I make this work, and you know what? It's very comfortable. Make sure the air temperature is nice, you know, have a little heating, have a bathroom, have something cold to drink and you will get great portraits, not in a professional studio, somewhere just like this.

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