My studio is finally open

mrlarter

I mentioned here ages ago I was working on opening a rental studio up here in the Maritimes. Well it is now finally open.

We got a small business loan (way to small sadly) that allowed us to buy the lighting gear we needed and we have been paying the rent and bills out of my pocket for a bit now.

Luckily things are going really well but does anyone have any suggestions for owning or renting a small photo studio to local photographers?

Sam

mrlarter wrote:

I mentioned here ages ago I was working on opening a rental studio up here in the Maritimes. Well it is now finally open.

We got a small business loan (way to small sadly) that allowed us to buy the lighting gear we needed and we have been paying the rent and bills out of my pocket for a bit now.

Luckily things are going really well but does anyone have any suggestions for owning or renting a small photo studio to local photographers?

The one glaring thing that jumped out at me was.........NO PICTURES!!!!

Your a photography studio. You should have photos that show your studio!

Also I couldn't see anything that indicated size. How large is your studio? How tall are the ceilings? How big are the doors? Are there any windows? What type of power is available? Do you have dressing rooms? If so are there mirrors, make up tables, clothes racks? You get the idea.

You need to tell people what you have is a way that will get them interested.

Them's my first thoughts.

Sam

mrlarter

Thanks. This is true and I'll have to add it to the studio tour area of the site. I'll get this up tonight or tomorrow. Sadly we are small and lack most of those things at the moment.

dragon300zx

Wow, lots of thoughts come to mind on this.

Here are the basics, advertise where photographers hang out online (boards, onemodelplace.com, modellocate.com, craigstlist.org, etc), network with other local photographers who you see at events, out on the street (people who may not have their own studio), and anything else you can do to get yourself infront of your target market.

Oh and everything Sam said.

If you sell memberships or anything like that make sure you have an online booking system that all your members can see and try to make sure the usage is fair (as in make sure one photographer isn't using the studio 40 hours a week and only paying the same as everyone else who can't get into the studio cause it's already in use).

mrlarter

Sam wrote:

The one glaring thing that jumped out at me was.........NO PICTURES!!!!

Your a photography studio. You should have photos that show your studio!

Also I couldn't see anything that indicated size. How large is your studio? How tall are the ceilings? How big are the doors? Are there any windows? What type of power is available? Do you have dressing rooms? If so are there mirrors, make up tables, clothes racks? You get the idea.

You need to tell people what you have is a way that will get them interested.

Them's my first thoughts.

Sam

Thanks a ton. I am going to make some changes to the studio tour part of the site today. We are sadly only small at the moment (450 sq feet).

Also any thoughts on what colour to paint a photo studio? I've heard so many different opinions it's a little confusing. some say black, some say grey others are saying white. Studios I've seen online tend to be white or black...

what are your thoughts?

Art Scott

mrlarter wrote:

Also any thoughts on what colour to paint a photo studio? I've heard so many different opinions it's a little confusing. some say black, some say grey others are saying white. Studios I've seen online tend to be white or black...

what are your thoughts?

That is truly a matter of personal taste.....I like black for background and floor...but then I never wanted to have tons o' muslin hanging around and went the route of one background and changing the colored gels on my background lights and one muslin (or white roll paper for high key and bridal shots)......now I am leaning towards either a chroma blue or green and doing digital backgrounds......but for my "traditional" work it will still be the black wall and floor....that way I can color it as I wish.......... and also it makes every shot look fresh as I never document my lighting and gels...so I cannot easily duplicate a scene perfectly.....kinda like haveing a background professionally custom made for each client or shot.....makes it unquie also

bsvirginian

Hi and good luck. Very sound advice. I'm not familiar with the "Maritimes". Where is it? How many photographers are in the area? If there are a lot of freelancers than there might be your market for renting your space.
My custom studio is 20'x30'. I do have a rail system around the room with a bunch of muslins hanging. I have semi-perminant "fill mono light" and "hair light" with the main on a dollied light stand. All lights are triggered by quantum radio slaves and all have soft boxes. Although I've rented it on a couple of occasions I don't advertise it. I try to have it pre-set so that whenever I walk in for a portrait I only need to tweek it a little bit. It also has a bathroom/dressing room.
Just some thoughts. bsvirginian

mrlarter

bsvirginian wrote:

Hi and good luck. Very sound advice. I'm not familiar with the "Maritimes". Where is it? How many photographers are in the area? If there are a lot of freelancers than there might be your market for renting your space.
My custom studio is 20'x30'. I do have a rail system around the room with a bunch of muslins hanging. I have semi-perminant "fill mono light" and "hair light" with the main on a dollied light stand. All lights are triggered by quantum radio slaves and all have soft boxes. Although I've rented it on a couple of occasions I don't advertise it. I try to have it pre-set so that whenever I walk in for a portrait I only need to tweek it a little bit. It also has a bathroom/dressing room.
Just some thoughts. bsvirginian

This is what we eventually want to get to. Right now we are fairly small and focus on renting it out to other photographers. I am not a studio photographer so I don't use it a whole lot but it's been a great learning experience. It is now starting to pay for it's self so hopefully we soon can expand slightly.

The Maritimes are fairly small population wise. But it's the only rental studio in the maritimes so that helps with business.

sirsloop

I'm not trying to be rude, but I would have asked this question before opening a studio and paying the rent out of pocket!

I guess at this point, only thing left to do is get the word out. You gotta do some upfront work and contact all of the photographers that you can find in the area. Get a brochure printed up and mail it to them. Heck, hit the streets and see if you can meet some of them face to face. Get your number listed in the phone book, and maybe put in some ads in the paper or local circulars. If you have a bumpin craigslist there, make some posts regading your space. Visit some of the local photo stores and see if there is a bulletin board or somthing where you can post a flyer. Heck, walk around town and put one in all of the shops that have a board.

I agree with Sam's comments as well about the site. Right now it looks like a blog, not a studio site. Redo the site and have some photos glaring at you on the homepage. You can still blog on it, just not on the homepage like that. It looks like some dude's website. Set your gear up and have a fake photo shoot going on or something... get a couple friends go to pose as a model/photographer while you take photos of the studio in action. Get those on the site. You may also want to mention what kind of accomodations are available in the area. Parking, food, public transportation, etc etc. Anything you can mention to make your space more attractive. Also... your logo... just curious how you came up with it? Its like "3.5 4 5.6 8 11 16 22 32". Lol... I suppose it makes more sense to do 2.8 4 5.6... or was 3.5 purposly put there to make photographers wonder how 3.5 fits in the 1 stop pattern the rest of the numbers are in??