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Advise needed
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I’m far from earning a living from my photography, but I have some xp with photographing at home. I live in a fairly large apartment with a huge and bright living room (one of the walls is top to bottom window). I have chosen this flat to accomodate my “studio” in it. While it would be ideal for portrait photography, I can hardly find anyone else than my friends to stand still for photos and the few portfolios I shot for people were all taken on location. I think, a dedicated studio with a separate entrance is much more comforting. If you have a large garage and could convert it….
I agree that people would think twice before going to someone’s spare room for a photo shoot. I know I would.
You say you intend concentrating on children. We got photos of the kids done a couple of times by a pro photographer, before I got to grips with my SLR, and at the time he came to our house.
Initially we were cold called by his daughter who went knocking on doors making appointments. He arrived on the appointed day with hiis gear and took photos of our son. 3 years later we had a girl and we rang him and he came out again. Both times were very professional and we bought several 8×10 framed prints plus 6×4 for aunties, uncles etc.
We live in Lucan and he came from Bray. This might be a way to introduce yourself and build up a portfolio before asking customers to come to your house.
Best of luck
Damian
Its hard to work out of the house as its not easy for the customer, yourself or your family with people coming into their “private” space – if you know what I mean. Mind you, I started out doing that myself and then some years later built the studio off the house. It was really only then that the business started to build up. I was being seen as being serious about what I was doing. A lot of this is about perception I think.
I agree with Gerry about the whole perception thing. Even down to the ridiculous situation that if you’ve got a big lump of a camera you’re more likely to be taken seriously than someone with a smaller camera because “an amateur would never have a camera as big as that”. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across that attitude, even amongst people that ought to know better.
If you plan on photographing children then really the best place for that is in their own home. It’s an environment they are familiar with and comfortable with and it’s “their space”. That’s the approach I’ve adopted and clients love it. They don’t have to worry about getting everyone together for a trip to a studio, they’re not coming into a place with white walls to be blasted with strange looking flashing lights and so on. There’s also the purely practical side for me as a photographer – whilst the operational costs may be higher, the overheads are certainly lower. You can offset the higher operational costs be charging more for what is effectively a premium service. I’m quite some way off making any real money from this yet, so don’t take everything I say as gospel but one little step at a time I’m getting there.
Like Thorsten, I usually take family / child shots in their own homes primarily for the reasons outlined in his post.
Some other advantages are that you can take the shots at a time that is convenient for the customer and they don’t have to be rushing out to a studio. You can also take a little bit more time as you do not have clients booked in for a session just after them. Should a child be proving difficult to get a shot of, they have all their own toys handy and some of my more popular shots have been taken of kids just playing in their own space entirely at ease with their surroundings.
If needed, you can always have a backdrop in the boot of your car. My one only takes about 10 minutes to set up so if they decide to go with the “venture” style shot this can be done relatively easily. You can also make the adults at ease and build up the childrens confidence by having a coffee & chat beforehand.
I’d love to have my own studio but the overheads and insurance costs are prohibitive for me at this stage.
RGds
Kevin
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