In the second of two guest articles, award-winning photographer David A Williams shares his thoughts on studio spaces. For those of you who may have missed it, you can find his first article on wedding photography HERE.
Studio thoughts
(I’m going to share my experience of a small studio. Obviously, if you plan on a ‘get-em-in, get-em-out’ studio – your choices and needs will be different. And I can’t help you there.) A Studio is just a room. Its just a room where we make pictures. Any room is a studio. Bear with me here… If you walk into a studio (which is after-all only a room) and the background is set up at one end, where must the camera go? where must the lights go? and where do your subjects go?
Forgive me for raising my voice here but: WHERE is the Creativity?
I simply have a room. I can move chairs, couches and tables – the walls are ragged/painted. If I need a light, I set one up.
Think of it this way… how many of us love shooting location work? Why? I would suggest it’s because we photograph in depth. My studio does that precisely because I have no fixtures that dictate to me what I must do.
Find a building or room that faces north. Use daylight. Frontally, or side or whatever.
Use One Studio light with a dirty great big softbox or preferably a Larson starfish or equivalent. One light. Use silver (not gold, not white) reflectors. Did I mention use one light? (there is only one in the sky). Do NOT bolt anything to your ceiling or walls – do NOT use scissor lifts etc. Especially if you want to aim for, or maintain a casual style of work.
What I’m challenging on is the concept that you MUST have this type of setup, or that you must have multiple lights to make great portraits. When I started in photography, I was told I should have at least three studio lights. Daunting, expensive and not quite correct. Fortunately, my father educated me that the work I most liked used one light (David Bailey, Snowdon, Irving Penn et al).
(Pretty much everything you ever see of mine is one light… FWIW)
My reception area IS my studio. Why would I take people from lovely light and nice furniture to another environment when its all right there to start with?
Think of it this way, why do we love environmental portraiture? Depth is one reason, a natural feel to the background is another. Personally, I appreciate really good environmental portraiture more that work against a background.
I did a series of ‘mentor’ lectures throughout Asia and India for Kodak a while ago…it was a very interesting experience. Every wanna-be photographer goes to a studio to learn.
Every Studio has five lights.
Very few Studios know how to use those five lights.
They use black backgrounds.
The lighting pattern as taught, is hairlight too bright, sidelight too bright and the rest totally flat.
I was photographed in a ’studio’ that was less than 8ft square with five lights.
During one of the seminars I shot a model, low angle, in a hotel at the bottom of some steps, with a single light and a car sunblock screen for a reflector. I dragged the shutter to incorporate the towering garden foyer and ’splashed’ colour up the stairs with a little flash wrapped in unexposed but processed film.
The resulting ‘kodak-roid’ (fuji disguised) when pealed apart caused absolute consternation, admiration and wonder. “Be-yoo-tifool Mr.Williams” “So ravishing M.Williams” “The quality is incrediable Mr. Williams”……..
The final comment from the guy most vocal in his admiration floored me: “But Mr. Williams, this isn’t professional photography – it hasn’t got five lights!”
My final comment on this subject is this:
A studio is simply a place where you make a controlled image. It’s an area out of the rain, nothing more. You don’t have to listen to music only in a music room. You don’t need a special shed to do carpentry. It should therefore be as versatile and as simple as possible. Make your decisions based on what is a natural extension of your wedding work. If you do beautifully controlled posed wedding work in the best tradition, your studio will need to reflect that. If you’re casual and PJ…..?
And yes, in Australia (southern Hemisphere) we look for south light.
A writer interviewing Snowdon was enjoying the comfortable ambience in the room were they were talking. He then said to Snowdon, “Perhaps we could look at your studio now?”
Snowdon replied “You’re sitting in it”
You can make wonderful clip together light diffusers. I haunt ‘Schmattah’ (sorry if that’s spelt wrong) that is, fabric shops. A simple curtain will probably cost less, and be less invasive of your area.
“Good portraiture has nothing to do with how many lights you have, how strong they are, and what brand they are….it has everything to do with the QUALITY of the light you have – and how you modify it, no matter how small.”
His name gets overly used in relation to portraiture, but what lighting system did Rembrandt use? What about Reynolds, Lely, Rubens, Van Dyck? …imagine:
“Mr. Rijn, (I so admire your work, and I’m just starting out in painting) what hair light did you use on that portrait of a man in a hat?”
It isn’t about multiple lights, it isn’t about expensive props, it’s about the subject, the light, the ideas and the expression.
Just further to my quotation about the quality of light, let me explain further, and the hotel light bulb point is part of it… A candle has a certain style of light, early morning light is a different quality to late afternoon (and a different colour) direct sun was something I avoided until I was exposed (sorry no pun intended) to the work of the Western Australian photographers…
We know that all of these light sources have widely diverse characteristics and intensities. Knowing how and when to use these, and how to replicate them in the studio environment is more important.
My point is that it makes sense to explore what you have to work with first, before you go accumulating gear which may or may not suit your requirements, environment usage, intent or throughput.
Throughout my involvement with photography, I always felt a new camera, lens,or a new light would improve my photography. It’s taken almost 30 years for me to fully understand my Dad’s maxim about simplicity.
A female photographer told me she has just acquired a great reception area filled with natural light. I would really like to see what she comes up with… especially with her eye. Maybe she could show us what she does with a single diffuse studio light in the same position as the window?
Don’t get me too wrong – I love the studio, but I agree we can take it too far… there’s a little thought:
Why do Americans love making films in Australia & New Zealand? One of the reasons is that in the ‘States you have a team of brilliant lighting technicians that can direct 10 gigawatts of totally pristine light replacing and controlling the light existing on the scene’… ‘In Australia, we’re used to the last actor on the set leaving the door open’ (it’s a joke by the way…)
Not all existing light is wonderful, nor is all studio light. It’s down to the individual. At some time there will be a return to the Studio. How we respond to that will ensure our future. The biggest mistake we could make is to return to what has been done, rather than learn from other sources.
We found our portrait market decaying due to over-promotion 10 years ago. Many studios were producing work which simply didn’t compete with the in-store photographer (not different enough). I personally think that there will always be a demand for Studio photography, but I look to the beautiful editorial portraiture from ‘Vanity Fair’ and the like for direction.
For me, (and this is just my opinion) I don’t think the future lies with the standard lighting set-up, standard backgrounds, and standard poses. (BUT to know all of this is vital).
Many Aussie studios who experimented with glamour photography used exactly the same lighting they would for families – no study of Hollywoods Hurrell, Bull or Hesse, no study of Horst or Parkinson, no study of Schrebnezki, Bailey, Lategan or Scauvello. If they’d studied (particularly the latter) they would have realised that the lighting is the simplest you can find, and is not reliant on gobs of make-up and cheesy gauze to make a woman look superb.
I believe there will be a demand for the elegance of Norman Parkinson pictures from the 50’s – it’s already appearing in editorial portraiture… Are we ready?
