When we speak of a home photography studio, we always imagine a grandiose, modern, hip place brimful of people, but those aren’t the only studios that exist.
What if we told you, you can turn your spare room or a corner of your living room into you very own photography studio? Here’s how to set up a photo studio at home cheap budget.
Creating Your Home Photo Studio
While you can always keep improving a home photo studio, it has got to start sometime. And there’s no better time than today. So, here’s a few important aspects you need to keep in check once you’re ready to set up your own home studio.
1. Set The Studio Layout
Before you move on to setting up your studio, you need to be aware of the location. People who aren’t rather wealthy can’t always afford a standalone studio. They’d rather opt for a spare room or a part of their living room, in which case, they want to make the best out of both. And that’s where the problem lies.
You need to prioritize your studio’s layout and capitalize your requirements of the studio, regardless of the space you can devote to it, whether big or small.
Window access, for instance, can allow you to save tons of money on otherwise expensive lighting setup. We’re not saying you won’t eventually need one, but you can still set up your studio without it! Window lumination provides beautiful ambient light, just enough to make your product photos and portraits pop!
2. Manage Your Workstation
Keeping in mind that you would obviously need computers and gadgets to store, share and process your images just means that you will have to take up workspace optimizations as your best bet.
With today’s innovations you needn’t worry about sturdy, robust workplace setups, rather you can opt for DIY or ultramodern and sleek setups that can save you quite the space!
When it comes to placing your objects, use every bit of advantage you’ve got. If you want to place a table just beside the window so you can use it for food photography, taking advantage of the natural light, go right ahead!
Plan things out in the beginning and pay great attention to your goals, because your aims with the studio and your plans should reflect perfectly in your studio setup.
This will help you proceed successfully to meet your goals.
4. Source Backdrops
It’s okay to start off with one decent backdrop, if not a few. For starters, pick from neutral colors like black, gray or white.
Backdrops can be anything starting with a piece of cloth, plastic frames or a wall.
If you’ve got a beige wall that you’re proud of, use it as your backdrop instead of investing in expensive backdrops right away. Pair it with classy couches and a suave, aesthetic wall painting to create the Perfect Space for artsy, wonderful portraits.
For colorful backdrops, you can manage by hanging up colorful fabrics on the background. You can also use color gels that let you change the light’s color upon putting it over the light source.
Apart from simply changing the light’s color, color gel can also produce pretty eccentric photos!
5. Select Studio Lighting
You can’t always rely on Natural light as the single light support for your photo studio at home. So, you’ll need to decide upon a suitable artificial light source. The setup may vary based on your needs and purpose.
As far as Artificial Lighting is concerned, there’s two options: a. Continuous or, b. Flash.
Flash lights are most commonly used in studio photography. Good lighting isn’t always about expensive equipment, it’s about using good techniques alongside a hint of creativity to do the job for you! You’ll need to know how light works and handle it properly. Likewise it’s wise to plan ahead what kind of subject you would generally light up in order to most efficiently decide which flash to purchase.
5. Choose Your Props Wisely
From furniture and decoration to clothes and utensils, props can be anything you can literally think of. Not only can props enhance your photographs, they can also enhance the emotion underlying a photograph. Equally bad choice of props can ruin the whole mood of a photograph.
Hence, it’s greatly important that you employ maximum creativity and make highly artistic and innovative props out of ordinary things that you can get hold of.
Observe how an old bookshelf, some dirty books, an old pillar, wooden table, lamp and a teddy bear really brings out the mood in the picture below. It makes you feel emotions like love, warmth, fuzziness, family and a feeling of safety.
This picture right here represents a truly brilliant case of prop design.
6. Create a Comfort Zone
When things pick up, chances are you and a lot of other people – models, brand representatives, production crew and many more are going to spend a lot of time in your home photo studio working; taking photos, planning, editing. So you’ve got to keep everyone’s comfort in mind, especially when you want the best results.
Ensuring comfort doesn’t mean that you have to go beyond your budget and spend cheekily, rather it extends to the simple act of laying out a place to relax and replenish between multiple shoot plans, change between shoots etc.
Allowing such comfort to your respondents allows them to do their work in a comfortable manner, thus ensuring the greatest outputs of your work.
Conclusion
Now you know how to set up a photography studio at home without having to exceed your budget. Just make sure to brainstorm, improvise, plan and execute the actions needed to set up your studio with absolute confidence, faith in your abilities and wishful thinking. With a little vision and some experience, you’ll soon get the hang of it, and your passion project will pick up!
