Late last year, when we realized that our lease was ending and our landlord was going to be raising our rent almost 300%, we knew it was time to start looking for a new space. The old studio in the Penthouse of 318 West 39th Street was old, it needed a major facelift and, well, to be honest was just too expensive. Lucky for myself and my partner, we found a space in the same building only two floors down that we could sublease for the next 5 years. It was perfect, moving is horrible to begin with, but we only had to move down two floors.

The new space was a former warehouse space for an import/export company. The company had scaled down operations in the city and moved most of their warehousing out to New Jersey. The space, however, wasn’t even close to move in condition. So began the last 7 months of planning, re-designing, hiring contractors, managing contractors, firing contractors, and building what is now CaptureRoom Studios at 318 West 39th Street, 11th Floor.

Here is a photo of the space before we moved in (actually, this photo was taken after we put up the outside wall separating my space from the remainder of the floor and after we had done some cleaning – so you can imagine what it looked like before we started work). It needed a lot of work. There was 90 years (yes, the building was built in 1917) of electrical wiring adorning the walls and ceiling, a floor that hadn’t been protected or sealed in many years, and no external walls to separate my space from the other two tenants that were moving into the floor (which by the way are my old studio partner Michel Delsol and a startup called Online.TV). There was also enough dirt and dust to start a garden.

After 7 months, we’ve finally come to the point where we call the studio open. There’s still much to be done. The entire space needs another coat of paint, and maybe some color too. We’re also still trying to organize storage areas. In New York City, space is a premium and although we have almost 2000 square feet, we chose to make as much of an open floor plan as possible to keep the space OPEN and airy. There is also a post production room, production office space, a dry kitchen area complete with an espresso machine, and a dressing room which are not pictured here because, honestly, we’re embarrassed to show the disaster while we complete their transformation.

When you first walk into the space you enter a small waiting area. The space is about 10′ x 10′ but is perfect for four chairs and some magazine space. We’ve yet to put up any photos on the wall (because we’re waiting for our new large format printer to be delivered), but those are soon to come. You’ll notice in all the photos, most of the walls are bare and lack color, that will soon be fixed and is the next and final step in our buildout process. Everything in this space is from at IKEA from the floor to the chairs to the lighting.

The reception desk is directly adjacent to the waiting area. It’s about 3 feet deep x 6 feet long. And perfect for the receptionist’s phone, some work space and a iMac. We chose to make levels on the desk to hide some of the clutter that receptionists (even the most organized) tend to make throughout the day. For those of you who are keeping track, everything in this photo is bought at IKEA also. The white screen that you see in the background is a window curtain, the table top of the reception desk is a kitchen countertop that we cut in half and the cabinets that make up the bottom are actually wall hanging kitchen cabinets that (I personally) modified to work as floor units. The entire unit is secured to the floor and the wall.

When you walk past the reception desk to the right is the printing area. The screen you see hanging is the one behind the reception desk. In the left hand side of this photo, you see my Capture Cart which rolls just about anywhere (we’ve had this thing in Times Square and in Miami on the beach), I’ll discuss this in another post. In that space, however, will soon be a Canon iPF 8100, 44″ Large Format Printer. We’re waiting on delivery. Also, while we’re waiting for our printer shelving to be built, our smaller format printers are hidden away in an office. One neat thing that we did in this area was setup two types of lighting (which you can’t see in this photo): There are two switches one switch to control the Tungsten (actually low wattage fluorescent) light you see in the top of the photo and another switch to turn on a daylight balanced light. We chose to do this so you can view prints under both Tungsten and Daylight.

Next to the Printing Area is a Conference Area. Again, everything is from IKEA, including the lighting that is hanging on the ceiling.

This is the Makeup Station as seen from the main shooting space. To the left behind the column is the dressing area, to the right is equipment storage (which you won’t see pictures of because we’re still working on the storage solution for it all).

Here’s another shot of the Makeup Area. Ok, I lied you can kind of see the equipment storage in the reflection of the mirror.

And here is the main shooting space looking at it from the Conference Area. The main space is 32′ x 32′ which you can comfortably setup a 12′ seamless and have a ton of space on each side for lighting equipment. We designed the space so you can actually back up into the conference area if you need more depth, though even with a 70 – 200 lens, I rarely need to backup into the Conference Area. The lighting in the main shooting space is all daylight balanced — while we won’t be shooting under this light it is nice to be able to view test prints on-set and the true color of garments under daylight balance lighting. There is still one more row of overhead lighting that needs to be installed in the far end of the studio.

Here is a shot from the studio’s back wall looking back at the rest of the space. Storage area is off to the Right, Makeup station, and a glimpse of the dressing area, the conference area, and behind the “tiled” set wall (which is a set from a recent shoot) is the post production office. Way in the background you can see the reception desk and waiting area.

Here’s one more shot of the main shooting space from the makeup area. You’ll notice the windows that line the wall of the studio. Enough sunlight comes into the studio to call it a daylight studio for those times when you want to shoot with natural light; Once our storage situation is worked out the equipment that you see along the windows will not be there. We also have Velvet Curtains being made to cover the windows.

As you can see, there’s still a little bit of construction and “beautifying” to be done. But we’re almost there.

We also have access to three additional studios on the floor that of my old studio partner, Michel Delsol, and two from Online.TV (one of which is a Green Screen Studio).

Stay tuned, as soon as we get the studio “beauti-fied” we’ll have a little bit of a studio opening party.

About the author

Kevin Michael Reed
Kevin Michael Reed (Google+, Facebook) is a fashion & beauty photographer and producer/director based in New York City and Los Angeles, CA. He is the President/CEO of RedFOG Visual Media, a production company in New York City, and a partner in Passion of Photography, Inc, a company dedicated to teaching photographers and sharing our passion through charitable causes. Kevin has lectured and hosted workshops throughout the United States and the world teaching photographers the business and creative sides of photography. (Kevin's Fashion & Beauty Photography Portfolio can be seen here).