Christmas is now firmly behind us and we are well in to the new year, and looking forward to opening the new studio. We were planning to open in the first week of the new year, indeed we did have a booking, but as it was so cold we decided to build an annex to Studio Two to allow us to heat it much more efficiently and make if a lot more comfortable for our clients. The original design of Studio Two was a single room 16ft x 16ft with a 12ft ceiling and open on one side, when we tried out the studio just after Christmas we found it was very difficult to heat because the building was so large, so we have now built an ante-room on the open side, 16ft wide and 20ft long with a 8ft ceiling making the total size of Studio Two now 16ft wide and 36ft long with a 12ft ceiling over the studio area and a 8ft ceiling over the photographers part of the studio. This design brings some unique facilities to our studio, obviously it has made a much easier to heat space, it has also provided much more privacy for models, but probably the most important thing is, it has created the perfect area for teaching, and holding club events. Studio Two should be ready for hire around the end of January 2012 and we hope to be hosting a lot of events including model days and various club nights (more on that later).
The studio area is painted totally black to eliminate any reflections providing the perfect space for lo-key work and creative lighting, however as anyone who has worked in a totally black studio will know whilst they are great places to control light, they do make some things a bit more difficult like changing lenses and generally seeing things, for this reason we have painted the ante-room a mid grey, this will reflect a bit of light making the space nicer to work in but should not reflect enough light in to the black area to change the exposure very much. The model’s changing room opens directly in to the ante-room creating a totally self-contained studio. The ante-room can also be used as additional changing space.
To the rear of the studio is the workshop area, which is equipped with wood and metal working equipment, allowing our clients to assemble props. The workshop has a large sliding door 16ft wide and 16ft high so large vehicles can be driven in to the workshop, allow them to be unloaded in the dry, this is ideal for fashion photography when the photographers need a large quantity of clothing or is photographing people or products they wish to be kept confidential.
