The Works Studio: Why is The Works really THE WORKS!

Tuesday, 19 October 2010

Why is The Works really THE WORKS!

I'm often asked what The Works Studio has that all the others don't? Many other studios look much nicer than ours they have fancy laminate flooring and nicely decorated changing rooms, and all the latest Apple Mac editing computers, well the simple answer is ME! okay this might sound incredible arrogant, but fortunately it's true, I have been a full time professional studio photographer for well over ten years, and a semi professional for nearly thirty years. I have served my time in professional studio shooting on most film formats from 35mm to 10x8 plate cameras. I'm a Associate of the Royal Photographic Society I'm not some guy who has decided they would like to do a bit of photography and got a digital camera and opened a studio. I actually understand light, I actually learnt the art of lighting both at Cambridge School of Art under the world famous photographer Hag, and have assisted such photographers as Tony Middleton. I'm know as the professor of lighting by many of our clients and have taught most of the local photographers their lighting skills, but it's not all about knowledge it's about how you can teach it, I'm a qualified teacher and have taught at HND and Degree and supervised at Phd level at Cambridge. Having said that whilst The Works might not have fancy laminate flooring, it certainly has the best lighting around, from it's world beating Elinchrom 1.9m octabank to it's Bowens Ringflash pro. but more importantly it also has someone who knows how to use it. and if you don't like flash we have a complete set of 5 Redheads and a 1Kw Photo-beard broad light the real ones not the crappy imports from China. however the most important thing is our studio is of proper proportions, it's not a room with a low ceiling painted white where it's impossible to produce anything except high key images, our studio has a ceiling over 20 foot high and is dark grey so low key lighting is easy, you can always tell the quality of a hire studio by the calibre of it's customers, and we are very proud to boast some pretty illustrious photographers using us, and have been used by Practical Photography magazine for their 16 page article on nude photography, and have photographers travel from all over Europe to use out space, sorry we don't cater for the so called "guys with cameras". if you want to perv at naked model and take a few snaps you probably won't feel very comfortable at The Works, however if you are a creative photographer you will love our studio.

Any business is based on it's service and it's staff, and The Works is no exception. we know we have the best staff around. in fact we really are THE WORKS!

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The Works Studio, St Ives, Cambridgeshire

The Works studio is a fully self contained photographic facility with much more to offer than just a large white studio box, we have meeting rooms, a very large room with a bar for teaching and meetings, that can also double up as two more studio areas. The studio is available for hire to professional and amateur users alike, whether you are a model, photographer, designer or make-up artist The Works is the perfect place to work. Hire charges start at £25 per/hour, with discounts for students and longer bookings over four hours.
The Studio area measures 30foot x 36foot with a ceiling height of nearly 20 foot, (This is no converted spare room or garden shed!) with a 16foot wide x 10foot high infinity cove with 10 foot deep floor providing nearly three times more space than the average colorama backdrop studio.

Our studio is quite different from many “glamour studios” that have been painted plain white. All white studios are great for some types of photography such as hi-key glamour and fashion, but it is virtually impossible to shoot lo-key art photography in one. Whilst hi-key lighting can easily be achieved in our studio with the use of lighting and polystyrene sheets. The same cannot be said for creating lo-key, lighting with hard shadows in all white studio. Quite simply, the light gets reflected off all the walls and kills any shadows.

At the Works studio we have carefully created the perfect balance of white infinity cove for fashion, surrounded with dark walls to allow shadows to be created and controlled. The studio is a converted 1930’s factory and we have left much of the old factory ‘feel’ in the building, we have not replaced the rather distressed old wood flooring with shiny laminate, and the walls have been kept in their original industrial condition, when you first come in to our studio you may feel the building a slightly dilapidated compared to the shiny new studios build in modern factory units, but as soon as you start to be creative the building comes to life, we do not have room sets, if you want to shoot in a bedroom set why not just use a real bedroom! If you are a ‘guy with a camera’ our studio really is not for you, however! if you are a creative photographer looking for total control of your lighting, then we feel we are the best studio around, we don’t just have big soft boxes, we also have specialist lighting such as 70cm beauty dishes with honey combs, and Quadmatic spotlights that can be fitted with gobos to create silhouettes and shadows, we have one of the latest Bowens ring flash pro. Or if you prefer we have a set of five 800w Photo Beard Redhead tungsten lights, and a RRB 1Kw broad light, ideal for recreating the 1950’s feel, from before the days of studio flash. If we were to liken our studio to anything we would say it’s more like something from the film ‘Blow Up’ than the rather phoney TV show ‘America’s next top model'
We understand many of our customers want to shoot on plain colour backgrounds, so if it's a colorama background you require we also have them, our system is fitted to our balcony allowing rolls to be changes safely and easily at waist height, (no going up ladders in this studio) at 8feet high the balcony overlooks the infinity cove so can be used to shoot down on to the cove area. Underneath the balcony is a fully equipped model's changing room with four make-up stations and the latest Iwata airbrush makeup system. The studio can be accessed either from the main entrance or directly through double doors from our large car park making it easy to unload heavy equipment or props directly in to the studio. Whilst the studio is not fully compliant with the latest disability access requirements, we have gone a long way to making all our facilities wheel chair friendly and we welcome disabled photographers.