Studio Space

Is having a physical studio a dying concept? And if so, why? This week I share my thoughts as well as my experience when my studio reached the point where I needed to consider getting retail studio space.

Also in the Godox and MoLight news section of this episode: I announce the new VSA spotlight attachment for LEDs and the new Golden Eagle V300 300w 22" LED Panel.

Please like and follow the podcast Facebook page and join my Facebook group.

Transcript

female announcer: 0:03

Live from mo lights studios in the heartland of America, it's your Monday morning jolt of hot photography tips with a frothy topping of the latest product news from Godox. Mo light and more. Welcome to the Monday morning cup of Mo with your host, the man who put the MO in MoLight Michael Mowbray.

Michael Mowbray: 0:30

Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning cup of Mo. I'm your host, Michael Mowbray. Each week, I pour a cup of coffee and I explore a single topic related to professional photography. Thank you for joining me this week. So what are we talking about? We're gonna be talking about studios, more specifically, actually having a studio space. So here's the question, is having a physical Studio A dying concept? And if so, why? Hmm, let's talk about that. Here are my thoughts. First of all, yes, it seems like more photographers are working without a commercial studio space. So many are shooting entirely on location, whether outdoors or in a client's home or in an office space or wherever they're just not shooting it up actual studio space. And I'm seeing many of my friends and acquaintances in the industry downsizing from larger brick and mortar spaces to home studios. So it does kind of appear on the surface, that there's kind of a progression, or regression or downgrade session. Hey, that's there's a word for a downgrade from having commercial studio space to having something else. Well, while this seems to be more of the norm, I'm also at the same time seeing a lot of photographers looking to jump from being location only, or from a home studio into a retail space. So there are people moving both ways. So what's dominant, hard to tell unless you're going to do some heavy duty industry research which, you know, PPA, professional photographers of America does from time to time. And they might have a better grasp on this. But from what I'm seeing, and from some research, I've done some actual statistical research, hey, imagine that I'm seeing more and more people who are moving away from having a physical studio space. So but it doesn't seem to be solely a one way progression, or migration perhaps is a better word for it. While it appears that more people are moving away from having retail studio space, there still are a number of people who are looking to have a studio space. So why is that happening? What's happening? What's what's going on to make this happen? I think it's simply a function of the growth curve that successful photographers experience. Makes sense. Lots of people start photography businesses, and they achieve a little success. And a sub subset of those start to experience something more akin to exponential success, meaning their growth is rapid. They're getting booked up. So they raise their prices. Ideally, they raise their prices, they should be raising their prices, they still get booked up. And then clients want to shoot your round. And it becomes harder and harder to squeeze the demand into decent weather or into nice days or into the timeframe that you have set aside for sessions. Maybe you're working part time, and your schedule is really compressed because of that, or clients start to request more indoor portraits. There's a lot of reasons. At some point. For those of you who experienced that kind of growth, there comes a point where they have to make a decision. Do they invest in commercial space to help accommodate the the demand? Or do they raise prices again, to help manage demand? Or the do they do both? It's a tough decision. It's one I went through back in 2003. Yeah, sounds like a lifetime ago feels like a lifetime ago, actually, when my business was really starting to take off. I was kind of attracted to the glamour of having a retail space, I admitted. It can be a big statement to have a beautiful retail space. And at that time, remember, this was 2003 all the big name successful photographers had retailed studio spaces, it seemed that in order to achieve success, I would need to have a retail studio as well. But then I began to run the numbers. And being a creative guy. I actually am a numbers guy too. I just have to flip that switch in my brain. And I come from a business background to me. I was an executive at an ad agency for many years before I became a professional photographer so I can run the numbers actually, I was also headed up our research department as well. I started to crunch some numbers, and I determined what rent would cost. Then I learned all about a term called triple net. So those of you who have leased spaces know what I'm talking about triple net. That's a fun thing, isn't it? It's all the things you have to pay on top of rent. Like Real estate taxes, or building insurance and maintenance. So those things that you might be attracted by Oh, wow, that rents not that that high. Yeah, you can maybe almost double your lease costs with all these other charges that could be added on like, oh, maybe you live in a northern climate and there's snow removal, you got to pay for that. You have to pay for a portion of the building maintenance, you know, if it's got a leaky roof, some of that's coming out of your checkbook. So there's a lot of other things that can be added on above, rental or the lease costs. So be very aware of that. And that can really jack up the monthly and annual cost of leasing a space. So the more I ran the numbers, the more I started to put the brakes on renting a space, I was looking at 1000s of dollars each month for the cost of the spaces I looked into, because y'all you need a fair amount of space to have a decent portrait studio, right, got to have the space for all the gear and, and I wanted to be able to photograph a large family. So I needed to have even bigger space. So as you start to run all those numbers and looking at bigger space, a there's not as many spaces available, be in the spaces that are available are kind of pricey. So I started looking at that it was 1000s of dollars each month for the cost of the space, and realized that money would need to come from increased profits, because that was an expense I didn't currently have. So if I'm going to be paying, let's say $4,000 a month, for my lease for my retail space, plus all the triple net costs and all that kind of stuff, I determined I'd need to increase sales by at least $10,000 per month just to offset these additional costs. Because you're not just swapping dollar for dollar, you gotta be doing it out of you know, some profit, because you'd have other costs tied into those $10,000, you got lab costs, maybe you've got an assistant, you've got equipment that you're trying to pay for, you've got insurance, you've got health insurance, you've got to pay yourself to, I didn't just have to raise my sales by $4,000 a month to pay for $34,000 a month in rent, I would have to raise it by at least $10,000. So I start to look at that. And how realistic is that? Well, I like to equate that to how many additional eight by 10s, I would have to sell. Now you could always do it, while portraits are more weddings or whatever. But I like to put it in terms of eight by 10s. That was an additional 208 by 10s per month that I would have to sell, Whoa, that's a lot eight by 10s per month. And as I looked more and more at that, it was like, am I going to be able to do that. And to me even more important to that than that was how much harder was I going to have to work to pay for the additional costs, without gaining anything more, I wouldn't be gaining any more profit, I wouldn't be gaining anything more other than maybe a little bit of an ego boost. So I started to look at that. And I said, you know, I don't know that I want to do that. And then also the retail space. As opposed to having a home studio. There's an expectation from your customers that you have set hours and that they can walk in. So you're looking at having employee costs unless you're going to be there all the time. Well, what if you've got a location shoot from two to four? Do you need somebody to man the retail studio or do you lock it up. So there's all kinds of other costs rolled into that. Then I also realize if I had a retail space in see where I'm going with this, by the way, I would be at the whim of the landlord. They could raise the rent every year if they wanted to about the way the lease was written. Or, or they could try to force me to sign a long term lease to help lock in the monthly costs. But then I'm locked into a lease for five years, maybe I don't want to be locked in for five years. Or they could opt to not renew my lease in favor of a different tenant. Or I could pay rent for 20 years. And at the end of the 20 years what what I own for all the rent money I spent nothing, zip, no equity other than maybe the brand value of the location of where I was. So once again, that could be changed at the whim of the landlord. Well, that became pretty unattractive in a hurry. So I looked at what are the alternatives that I looked into adding a studio onto my home. I had been operating a small studio space out of my basement like most people start seven and a half foot ceilings so had a four by six softbox in there that was interesting. But that wasn't going to suffice it for the increase in business and traffic I was seeing I was already putting some stress our home and our family life just from the traffic you know taking class threw my home all day long when I also had young children was not a very feasible concept. So as I look more at this, fortunately, my home is situated on a half acre lot. So I had room for expansion. And if I built an addition onto my home, that would be space that I owned, the money I'm spending towards that addition towards that mortgage is going towards equity in something that I own that I would eventually own. Because let's be honest, the bank owns it until you do. But I wouldn't have a landlord. And I would also again, as I mentioned, have the equity in the building. So as I started to explore this possibility, I found new challenges. Of course, the cost of construction was one, as I started to spec things out, I realized that the cost of the addition was going to be more than I paid for my original house 10 years before that. Okay, wow, yeah, things go up, go up in price in a hurry, I would also need to get the approval from my neighbors as well, to put that big of an addition on subs looking at between 15 116 100 square feet, I would also need to get approval from the village because I live in a suburb to be able to operate a business out of my home, which I hadn't done yet. Because I was operating a really small studio fairly quietly out of my basement, it was something I didn't realize I needed to do. So yeah, yeah, in addition to, you know, collecting and remitting sales taxes, which I did from day one, when I started my business part time, and of course, paying income tax, and all other kinds of stuff. You also need to be zoned or have a permit to operate a business out of your home. So there's more hoops to jump through. Right. As I worked to clear the hurdles, I also started to design the studio space in my head, it was occupying my mind for a while. Anytime I had some free time I was kind of designing it, what what do what kind of carpeting would I put into the office, all that kind of stuff? Should I go to stories and have my office in a loft space above the camera room. While that was kind of cool, because I thought, hey, I could put in a fire pole. Wouldn't that be awesome, that'd be unique. That'd be cool. It's like clients walk through the door and come sliding down the pole and go Hello, welcome to my studio. So we kind of have a whole brand thing. So I thought that'd be kind of cool. So I started to meet with a few contractors, and begin quoting the design process. And all of them, were recommending the instead I dig a basement, and connect that to the basement in my current home, and then also put the office space into the basement, instead of going up two stories, it was gonna be a lot more economical to do it that way. And also made better sense from the way the home was constructed to have a full basement underneath it, rather than having just a pad didn't make sense, just from a from an environmental standpoint, and how water would run off and all those kinds of things. And also keep the cost down. So I selected ended up selecting the contractor who was known for the highest quality and who, of course, was also the most expensive of the bids in the bids ranged by quite a bit. And the low end bed I didn't trust. So there's there's a little side story for you. You maybe they could have done it for the price that they quoted, I didn't trust it because it came in too low, especially compared to some of the other bids. So in your business, do you want to be that provider in the same way do you want are you offering prices that are way lower than everybody else? There's a trust factor in there too. So we'll save that for a separate podcast. But I wanted to do it right. And 17 years later, I'm very glad that I did. Construction was completed in August of 2004. The studio has a separate entrance, which to me is extremely important. Separate HVAC. So that's the heating and air conditioning and all that kind of stuff that's separate, which is important to me as well and we had to do because of the size of the space because my current furnace and air conditioner couldn't handle the increased output. But also it has all the air control separate from my main home so you know I could I could roast a yak in my kitchen and that air from that's not going to circulate into my studio. So you're talking about client experience, you know, the smells of whatever we're cooking for lunch or dinner, they're not going to enter into my studio because it's all a sub separate self contained system. So that's important as well. The ceiling because we weren't going to go to stories I was able to bolt the ceiling up to 15 and a half feet and that allows me now to put lights as high as I want to in my studio. And I also have a big bay a windows along the longest side of the studio so I get a lot of natural light in there if I want to use it or not. I actually don't use it that often. But it's nice for ambience when clients first come in is nice light streaming in through all these windows. We had to do that, because we're required by zoning to have certain amount of square footage of windows for the square footage of space that we had. So rather than putting in every wall, every exterior wall, which kind of would kind of mess up where I was going to put backgrounds, I put them all into one wall along the long side of the studio that wasn't planning in the shooting that direction anyway. So then it was kind of a win win overall, it also provides a very nice visual impact when people first walk into the space because my studio is wrapped around the backside of my house. Most people don't expect it to be a large space, they're thinking a home studio. So it's a small space, like in a living room or whatever. Oh, heck no. They walk through the door, and they see this really big room 25 by 30. That vaults up to 15 and a half feet with this huge bay a Windows with as light streaming in and the impact. As I see it every time somebody walks into my studio for the first time, it's pretty big. They're like, wow, wow, this is really cool. I did not expect this. So it's important to make a really good first impression. So that's one side benefit of all that stuff to in a lower level, I have my sales slash meeting room for clients and my office and production area so that that 2530 is repeated down in the lower level. And that's split in half. So I've got pretty nice size sales, a meeting area, and my office and production area is equally, equally sizeable, too, which is handy, especially when I was doing almost all my own prints. Using a large inkjet printer. I had plenty of room for it. I had plenty of room to cut it up and laminate and all that kind of stuff and mount things. Yeah. So make sure you're playing your space, right for everything you need to do. So bottom line is what I do it again, after going through all the options, would I do it again? Absolutely. Would I change anything? Certainly, I would have made the space a little bigger as it is, it's a little over 1500 square feet. But I you know, you never have enough space, you never have enough storage space. So that's something I would have built into, I probably would have bumped it out, you know, four or five feet more on one side, again, that would have driven up the cost. And I was already spending a lot of money as a was. What are the downsides, though? Well, to do it like I did, the property taxes are a big one I live in Wisconsin and property taxes in Wisconsin are high. So there's a big increase in the size of my house also LED to a big increase in property taxes appeal through the nose for property taxes. Next thing is dealing with neighbors, all of our neighbors except for one have been pleasant and supportive. But it just takes one a hole to make things difficult. And we have one of those who likes to be kind of petty and kind of shitty. I won't. I won't get into detail about that today. But just be aware that having a home studio has complexities as well. I'm also operating the business under what's called a conditional use permit, which can be pulled by the village at anytime they want. A lot of people talk about zoning, well in a residential neighborhood, your chances for getting a zoning change for your house alone. To operate a commercial entity is pretty low, they're not going to change your residential zoning in most places you're where you live may be different. But what they are willing to do in many cases, is a conditional use permit as long as what you're doing isn't going to be offensive to anybody in that neighborhood or disrupt regular home life for anybody. So one of the things that the village was concerned about they expressed concern about to me was traffic, you know, what kind of traffic would I be bringing into the neighborhood? Well, I never was high volume, never want to be high volume. So I pointed out how many home based daycares operate in the village. Several of them you know very near me I can see I can see two from my house that are home based daycares and how much traffic that they generate, which is five to six cars in the morning and the same five to six cars in the afternoon. Every day, Monday through Friday. I wasn't going to be seeing that many clients at the studio each day. So I you know, as I expressed to the Village, I'm going to have less traffic than the typical home daycare of which there are at least 30 or more in our small 9000 population suburb. So they conceded the point and they granted me the permit. There are also typically other restrictions on a conditional use permit, and that'll vary by location. One is how many people are how many customers are you allowed to have in your home or you're building at one time, there are other things too. There's gonna be noise ordinances and all those kinds of things. So has the studio space been worth the investment? Again, for me? Absolutely. It cost far less overall than a retail space. And I built equity from the investment. Now, I won't be able to get all that money back out. Not all the money that I put into this because I'm slightly over built for the subdivision. But it's been a far better investment than a retail location would have been, for me, at least for you. It depends. But do the math, do the due diligence, work all the angles before you make the investment, choose the option that best fits your studio, your growth, your town, your clientele, etc. Up next, I'm going to get a refill on my coffee, and give you the latest news from Godox and MoLight. And here's the latest news from Godox. And MoLight. Godox announced a new Spotlight attachment for its Bowens mount LEDs, it's called the V s, a victor Sam Abel has ever in the military. So hopefully that's right. It's a quite robust spotlight that, to me operates much more like a theatrical spotlight than anything else in the Godox lineup. Now they've got the S 30, and the s 60. LEDs that are projection LEDs. And you can put the SAP projection lens attachment on it. And I actually use that a fair amount in the studio. This is think of this as like a big brother to that it's much bigger, it's much more robust. It's designed to go on some of the larger LEDs that Godox has, like the VL 300, I think this is rated for 300 watts max, they recommend a 40 Put it on anything larger than that maybe you're going to be, you know, burning holes and in walls. But anyway, but it does. It looks really nice. I haven't seen one yet, because it's just been announced. And that's actually one of the purposes of this whole segment of the podcast is tell you about things that aren't even here yet, things have just been announced things that are in production, so you know what's coming down the line. These come in three different configuration based on the lens spread that you choose to include with the base attachment. So it's a two part thing. It's a base attachment, and then you put a lens on it. They have 1926 and 36 degree lens options. So you'll purchase a base configuration that's either one of one of those three, and then the other lenses will be available separately if you wish to have multiple projection lens options. I'm doing a little bit of research haven't decided, but I will probably just focus in on one of those sizes. And my guess is it's probably going to be the middle point, maybe the 26th degree but I'll do a little bit more research on that because this is pretty new. So the VSA is designed to create a beam of light with with clean edges and little to no chromatic aberration. You can easily use gobos you can use shutters and gels with the VSA as well they're making all of those for this. And there's an iris that can be inserted to allow you to create a pinpoint beam of light and that can be attractive to commercial and portrait photographers alike as well as videographers. The VSA with your choice of lens will run for $195 with the additional lenses running 259 Each Gobo sets will be $45 Gel sets are going to be 35. And the iris diaphragm is 99. So look for these to be available in first quarter as MoLight We're putting an order in for these, when they'll be done and when they'll ship and when will receive. Hey, who knows like everything else going on right now. In other news MoLight Has the brand new 30 inch 300 watt LED panel from Golden Eagle. Yes, it's a 30 inch square and 300 watts. This is a big mofo. It comes with removable four way doors. And the first Golden Eagle LED to feature remote control via Bluetooth app, which is pretty cool because some of the newer Godox LEDs have this feature. And I've really enjoyed it. It makes it easier if you're going to put an LED up on a boom, and you can connect with it via the app and Bluetooth and you can control the power up and down. I use the Godox sz 150 our RGB LED that's a lot via the app and I can change the color right from my phone. I can change the power all that kind of stuff. It's very cool. So the the new Golden Eagle 300 watt LED panel is the first of the Golden Eagle line to have its own app that you can use with it and they're going to be introducing other LEDs this year and beyond that will work out For the app, the V 300, as this is called, is continuous by colors. So it allows you to adjust the color temperature from 3200 to 5600 degrees Kelvin. So you can dial in all those points in between. I can see this being great for portraiture, because it's large enough to be a decently soft, light source. It's 30 inches. So think of it like a 30 inch softbox. You know, that can give you some decent portrait light. And it's gonna be great for videography, it could be great for TV production, even the retail price and this is 949. But MoLight currently has it at an introductory price of 899. And I should say you can run this off at AC and it will run off of two V mount batteries so you can take it out on location. So if you want something to go out and shoot LED or continuous light and full sun, will this do the job? Yeah, yeah, well, so it's bright enough. So I'll add the links to these new products on the podcast page in Facebook, so if you haven't, if you haven't followed the podcast, Facebook page, please do so. Because I'll be putting additional information there. And be sure to join the Monday morning couple of Mo podcast group where you can also ask questions and suggest topics and join the rest of the community as we grow this podcast together. Thanks for listening and talk to you next week.