This is Melvin see Melvin learn how to set up a studio in his home
See Melvin how to light. See Melvin learn how to make money in photography next on the slanted lens
All right, so Melvin this is the room. -
Yes it is -
So tell me what your vision is
What do you want to do? You have some thoughts?
This is a my media room in my home and I want to create a studio
Where I can do my pictures where I don't have to go out and rent a studio. Basically.
Perfect. Okay
well
Let me tell you my first kind of initial thoughts looking at it here
The bevels of the ceiling are gonna cause a little bit of a problem for us
but I don't think a huge one the fact that they're beveled won't bother you is for your soft boxes and things because if you
Push the static round against the wall. It's not gonna bump into that bevel. Its boxes are gonna stick out in front of it
Just enough. I think okay might be a little bit of a problem
You may want to favor this side
As far as lighting but you don't want to be tied in to always having to put your softbox on the same side
Okay, I think you can do both sides. First thing I would do here is I would paint the two side walls white
Okay reason being is that now those become you've got a little bit of a color here?
It's got that warmish tone
Which is what light bouncing on that warmer stone is going to give a little bit of warmth from that reflection
Okay, so let's just get rid of that by paying these white
Should I paint a coffee or a flat definitely flat what I flat like a okay?
Now that will become a nice kind of flat reflector
So if I set a box up on the side, we're like a figure here
Well, that's gonna bounce off the white bounce in back to the person. Okay?
Now that could be good or bad because sometimes it's just too much
Bounce, you know and then the ratios are just too it's like 1 2 1 it's like just over lit. Mmm
So we're gonna put a white a black curtain upon each wall
Okay, so that now gives you the option if you put your light up here
You can now draw those curtains back get a little bit of bounce off that white
Okay
What's nice about that in a smaller room like this is you don't have to set up a reflector always on this side you can
Use the wall as that reflector or you can do that either side - yeah either side so you can switch it to either side
You want to I wouldn't paint the back wall
Leave with that warm tone. You're gonna be putting C Lass's in front of it
Anyway, you might want to roll to seal this up
But just Julius, you know, who knows the last thing you want to talk about is the floor, okay?
It's hard. If you're gonna do a full full-body shot to have carpet because when you walk down the Seine listen
Just it crunches the seamless. It just doesn't really work, right
I think the best thing what I would do is I would just lay get three sheets of plywood down
4x8 plywood because this way this room is 13 by
11 perf width wise so we got 12 12 foot 8 foot back
Which is perfect to be able to roll your seamless out on it
Okay, and now you can you put your just lay them down tape them
You can roll your seamless out in this perfect. Okay. Have you seen you start filming on eat?
My scenes come out further then just pull them forward a little bit. Oh, okay. Now you've got a nice pace for your floor
And remember on when you shoot something like this is something really important
Those you have your your angle of view your photography or your camera's angle of view
And that's really controlled by the background
Okay, so that angle of view goes out it goes in this like a funnel back to the camera
Okay, so you're gonna see the entire background?
But now you don't see anything in these triangular corners right and left. That's where your lights go
Curtains curtains everything like that
So you're really from the cameras point of view if I camera reason right here to a camera it sees out like this we see
Our background so all these areas on the side. So you're not gonna use that much of this plywood up front
It's mostly good it just mean but you can put your stands on it and it'll work out nice
You can roll your seamless out on it. Okay?
The room is a little shallow for a full body without having to be on a pretty wide lens
Okay, but the one thing that we do have a door here and with that door we could do this
I can set it you stand there. Mm-hmm. I can move myself
So if I'm trying to get a full body on you, I'm not gonna get it here
I'm gonna have to step out this door about five or six feet out of the door
And then at that point I can get the full body. Yeah
Okay, add another ten feet. Okay easily another 10 feet
I just stepped out the door to the camera right side here. You can easily add another 10 feet in that view
Okay
and have your mama just work off to this side like from that side into your white or black here and
You can start using that run there. Okay, maybe your wife wouldn't mind if you just knock that door. I?
Made a little adjustment there
So I've been in Houston for a few days now and where I'm not gonna say exactly where we're at
But I've got a little sticker to put on my case and I'm gonna roll this case down the staircase here
We're gonna launch it into space for say that's really saying where we're at
But we're gonna put on our case right here little sq. Feet case a little sticker
action there
Yeah like that baby now, let's throw this inside
And I'm gonna keep it rolling and I'm gonna roll this down the stairs
Still rolling without any problem there if I get myself focused here we'll be in good shape and then
There we go
Still working still working absolutely fine and looking good SKB case
ready to rock and roll
now I'm not saying we're today but
That's maybe where we were
Okay, so we just got back here this morning and
You've been busy. Yeah, I just kind of tidied up things. I put the curtains up
Put the clamps on to make sure we got the elbows for the yep. So, yes, the one thing we talked about
This morning was because of this of the space and the the tightness of the space here. I would put a plate up there
In this corner, and I would put a 3/8 inch
On it a 3/8 inch plate you can buy them on
Amazon gonna be an H you know and
Just shoot into the wall
And there's just a place you can put a light in each one of the corners so you can put your rim light
From behind and you can hang it up in the in the ceiling the upside of that is a saves you space
Right the downside of that is it's always in the same place
And that that limits what you're doing a lot, okay
So using a stand that corner just gives you the ability to move it and to adjust it and do different things with it
well, the nice thing in the next step for you is
If you start to use continuous lighting and LEDs or something like that guys
Then you get you see exactly what its gonna do. Okay, and it makes it a lot easier to understand where lights go
Okay, where's when you start using flashes?
Flashes, you don't see it unless you take a picture you see in the camera, correct?
Well, we can start with we use my LED. I've got an incredible LED here
Okay, maybe down and get a shot of it, but it's the Intelli tech and it's called there a light cloth
But that's an expensive light for you for what you're starting out with. Okay, you'd be better off to
Just for the very first thing you get
The lights that we talked about in less than I did on setting up a home studio that we got from Lowe's
Okay and check out all those lights are just an easy. There's a one there
It's kind of a round bowl and it's a softbox basically really as you like
But check that let's now that'll give you some pointers on that. Okay, but for today's let's set up with your strobe
Let's let's make your strobe work
All right, and then as soon as we get a quick shot here
We're gonna do a quick shot something very moody
Then as soon as we get that shot, then we're going to just sit for two seconds
So I'm gonna tell him what I think he needs to do to
start his photo business cuz there's a couple of steps and he's doing
To start to make this a commercial venture for him. We'll talk about that real quick
We'll get a couple stools and just wrap it up on that. So, alright, let's get it. Let's get a shot
So let's get a stool here and let's get your light in here and let's go to town. Okay
So here we have it we've set Melvin's studio up for him we've got curtains on the side
Yeah, the place put seamless is in the back. He's bringing flooring in gonna do some painting
You're gonna do some video for us right as soon as this is all done
Yes, just some panning videos and just show us what's done here
And then I want you to do a shoot in here take a picture of your wife or something
Just do a shoot that when we're gone and send us some of those pictures
All right, one of the pictures I did at me as well
We're gonna show this okay as part of the lesson, so I went to how to set up the studio
We've gone through just some simple lighting techniques using a very small
inexpensive
Speed light by a single light with a reflector
So you can really work in the space and do a lot of interesting things in this space. Just that that one light
Shouldn't be a lot of fun. But now I'm gonna give you a little bit advice
All right about you said it would be great if you could make this in to a living and make money on it
Yeah, there's one simple thing you have to do
actually, I'm gonna say too but we'll start off with number one is I want you to think about
What is it out there in the world that people do?
That is interesting to you
So find something that you are interested in photographing
That people are going to pay for that's headshots senior portraits
Portraits of babies portraits of animals animals kit animals is a great one
I mean find something like that you really like
Okay and start focusing on that and make that your Instagram feed and shoot a hundred of them
I I want you right now in this space. You should shoot a person a day at least, okay
I mean you have the space you've got the equipment and you'll just keep learning just do one a day one a day and
Try to make them look really interesting and fun and and just really nice images
They're just these little niche markets that give you a reason to exist and start instagramming those get them up
Shoot one a day and pull one up on Instagram a day becomes your beginning point and you're you're kind of you're launched
Okay, people look at that and they'll either go man. He doesn't know that much or they'll go
You know what? I love what this guys doing? Okay, that person's gonna reach out to you and go
Hey, I love what you're doing when you take a picture of me. Well, sir, our next phase is
You start taking pictures of people who are reaching out to you
Then the so the first phase is you reach out to people try to get people then you try to find people
if people that are following your Instagram reach out to them when you see people that look really
Interesting to photograph reach out to them say hey, I'd love to do a shoot with you here and Cyprus outside of Houston
But have you come and do a shoot with you?
Okay, you know and so you start shooting with them and then the last stage is you start charging people. Maybe it's
$75 for a set of images. Maybe it's you know, you get that up to 150
You know 250 first seven and then he's you know
A head shot people should be charging $1,200 for a setting, you know when you really get to where you're supposed to be
Okay
so anyway
I hope you learned some things in there today about how to set up your studio how to do some simple one
kind of light setups to start shooting and then just some tips on getting out there and starting to create your own brand and get
People to follow you to be able to create your own world doing photography
This can be a part-time thing you do
It can be a fault that work into a full-time thing can just be a hobby thing
It really depends on what you want to do with it
But remember that principle find somebody who's gonna pay you to shoot what you are shooting. So keep those cameras rollin keep on clickin
Here the slanted lanes were really big on business so get over to the slender luscom and buy our business downloads
It's 16 segments that will help you shape your business. Plus it comes with a group call in once a month with me
Where you can ask all your questions, so get over to the salon lens calm today
The studio is all complete and all systems are go but first I'd like to say a very special
Thank you to JP Morgan from the slanted lens for helping me put this studio together Thank You JP