How To Build A Home Photography Studio Cheaply

Q: What does $93 in flooring get you?
A: A new studio on the cheap.

With two kids and a newly built house, I really had no time (or cash) to buck up and build a brand new home studio immediately. However, the weather outside has been getting colder and my portrait shoots were still booking. No one is interested in freezing their butts off outside so I had to think fast. I was left with little to no options so off to Home Depot for some studio triage. I found some remnant vinyl flooring that came pre-cut in a 12'x8' roll. It looks A LOT like hard wood flooring and but without the hassle of installing it. So I saved myself $30-40 by buying remnant and took it home.
I did try out this setup in my unfinished basement first but didn't like that backdrop a whole lot:





I used some old curtains from our daughter's room as the backdrop and it just screamed "amateur" to me so it was off to Plan B.

I closed off part of our living room just by moving some furniture and laid out the flooring for a second time (how nice is it that this floor is portable):





For reference: To the right of this picture I have some great windows for natural lighting in the mornings, and my trusty JTL Versalight studio strobe that I had since 2002. The set screws are stripped but I love this thing. It has a 60" Photoflex Convertible Umbrella attached to it as well for a nice large, single light source. The light is fired wirelessly through a PocketWizard Plus II Transceiver / Radio Slave.

For my backdrop I just used our walls. How easy is that? The people who built our house put used some matte white paint so that is what is there now. They were also nice enough to install an outlet literallay every 10' so I did have some Photoshop work to take one out of a coupl images but shooting at f/2 with my Nikon AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G Lens helped a whole lot!
This really did the trick and I like the photos a whole lot more (thanks to my daughter, Addison who was my lovely model - and turning one next week)










All in all, we have a 14'x30' living room that opens up into the dining room so I have some room behind me to step back. The best part is that when the clients leave, then I can just roll up my floor and have my house back. All you really need is about 12'x12' of space and a blank white wall and you should be well underway to making a photo studio on the cheap.

~ Mike