My First Foray Into Studio Photography

Last semester I took a course called “Introduction to the Studio” at my local community college which was all about photographing in a studio environment with artificial lighting (tungsten and strobe lights). It was an area I had zero experience in before signing up—and honestly one I didn’t think I’d like all that much because I always seem to prefer the aesthetic of natural light, but I was pleasantly surprised when I ended up really enjoying it.

I got to bring in fun props and create little still lifes every week, moving lights around and experimenting with different types of photo equipment I had never used before. It was amazing to learn all the nuances of how to adjust the lights and props to get different effects, and I found that with the right set-up, it was possible to create images that didn’t even look like they were produced in a studio at all.

I learned all about the kelvin scale, tungsten lights, strobes, focal spots, reflectors, diffusers, gobos, snoots, gels, scrims, honeycombs, softboxes, booms, light meters, penumbras (my new favorite word meaning, “the space between light and shade at the edge of a shadow”), and more. Holy crap, there are a lot of props involved in studio photography.

Here are some of the pics from my final portfolio. Some were for me, some were for work, and some were just for fun:

Above: In one of our first assignments, we had to shoot a simple object and experiment with using gels to change the background color. I gathered a few items that belonged to my Grammy Helen: a small perfume bottle from her bathroom, a 1950s match holder that used to hang in her kitchen, and then the rose I saved from her funeral. Shooting my grandmother’s house and her things was always one of my favorite subjects in my college photo classes so it felt like the right place to begin.

Tarot cards laid out on a blanket with candles lit

Above: A little tarot card-inspired environment that I created.
Below: Shooting reflective objects is tough! The key thing to keep in mind: “The angle of incidence = the angle of reflection.”

Speaker components laid out on a table — ***Above:*** *A still life of speaker components that I created for work.*

Above: This was my studio-mate Andrew. We both took a lot of photos of each other. Left to right: Low-key portrait, high-key portrait, portrait using 3-point lighting.

Above: This was a fun assignment where I was tasked with finding a studio photograph that I liked and then attempting to recreate it as best I could. 🍍
Below: These images aren’t photoshopped at all, they were created using mixed lighting, meaning tungsten and strobe lights together. You can get some really fun results with this method!