New Small Photo Booth for my Home Studio

My photo booth setup, installed in the studio, lights on, and ready for action.

Right before the pandemic forced YVC to move classes online and forced me to teach from home for over a year, my husband finished the extensive renovation on my home studio. The renovation gave me new walls, new floor, all new shelves and tables (except for the wedging table) and a lot more space for my work. I gained the extra space with better storage under my work benches and deeper shelves, but also by removing some awkward furniture and cleaning the place up quite a bit.

The photo booth needs both a deeper and taller shelf space than I had previously with my wooden shelves.

There was even new space for some significant upgrades to my studio equipment. In December I added a pugmill to the studio (which has proven to be a great studio tool!) and this spring I finally added a small photo booth to the studio. 

The photo backdrop has a gradient that provides a nice black to white range behind the work.

I've had a high quality large scale photo backdrop setup for years and I like it a lot. It replaced the lower quality backdrop I bought during graduate school and transported from Wisconsin. But that photo setup is quite large. It works great for large scale sculpture, but as I don't have space for it inside the studio (or the house), I set it up outside and try to take all the photos at once.

Photos of the work on the shelf look bad because of lighting, but also because of all the other stuff in the background or around the work.

The studio at YVC has a small photo booth that is permaently set up and gets used regularly (when students are on campus). This photo booth requires no setup, so students (and I) can just walk over, switch on the light and have quality images of their work without needing to clean a space, adjust lighting or move backdrops.

A plain white, grey, black, or gradient background removes all background distractions of texture, shape, and depth so you can focus on the work.

The photos may not be as high quality as those done by a professional photographer with professional lighting adjusting to get rid of shadows and glare, but they are head and shoulders above pictures taken on a work table. I encourage my students to really think about the quality of their photos because a poor quality photo can make good work look mediocre. I've also found that a good photo can actually make a work look better, or maybe it allows us to focus on qualities we might otherwise overlook in the work.

The small photo setup works great for small scupture and functional work like this citrus squeezer.

So, the upshot is that now that I have the space, I got myself the same photo booth for my home studio, complete with a vinyl gradient backdrop like the one we got for school. In my old home studio, pre-renovation, the photo booth would have had to go on the table or counter, eating up my valuable work space, but the new shelves are deeper and their height can be adjusted. 

I made a lot of citrus squeezers last summer. Many of them are still available if you are looking for one.

I've got the booth on a shelf, where it takes up a lot of space, but it doesn't take up work space. Since I had to put it next to the wheel or the glazing area, I was worried about it getting dirty. At YVC, the booth is way over in the corner of the main studio, away from wheels, sinks, and work spaces. At home I put it near the glazing area, but I've blocked it off when I'm not working on it by using this large whiteboard sign thing.

The whiteboard/image board keeps the photobooth clean and also gives me a visible storage space for inspiration/reference images.

My husband found the white board being thrown ow. It has a plastic front that can be lifted and posters or photos put underneath. Now the whiteboard is doing double duty for me, blocking stray glaze (and some of the dust) from landing on the photo area and also giving me a more convenient spot for reference photos than pinned up on the shelves themselves.

faceted mug and bowls made for student demos for online clay

The small photobooth won't work for my large sculpture and doesn't work great for work intended to be installed on the wall. I'll still have to set up the large backdrop for scupture, but this way I can take photos more often with less effort. My husband, whose pandemic career has become home renovator, is painting and renovating the laundry room. I plan to use the grey walls in that room as a convenient location for photos of work meant to be installed on the wall (shh, don't tell him about my ulterior motives. He thinks this is about laundry).

lots of citrus squeezers, let me know if you want one (or more)