My wife runs a fine art dance studio called Starlet Dance Works. In the latter years one of the parents have taken the pictures of the dancers on the photodays. This year his daughter doesn’t dance anymore and my wife was looking for a different photographer. Well she looked at me and said “You should do it”

So here we are.

Studio Photography is something I haven’t done to much of. I have done some now and then but then in other places where I could rent studio space and have all this professional grade lighting equipment at hand. Now I don’t have that where we live and I didn’t own anything of that sorts.  So as many others I went to Amazon to look what was there – I already knew that real equipment is far outside my budget to acquire for one shoot.

Amazon has a lot of things both really high quality and not so much. Low end complete studio packages are not the best, you get what you pay for so to say.

I found my package that had lights, light stands, umbrellas, backdrop and backdrop holder for $94.  It allowed me to get a decent result, but it is also a good showcase why quality tools and products cost more.

For dance positions the backdrop was rather narrow – I should have looked for a wider one.  I should have brought an extension cord, the light cables are very short, thanks to the neighbor of the studio this was solved. The lamps are not powerful enough to really cast enough light to light up the person in the shoot. The backdrop, it comes in two colors, I chose the white one, it was a little wrinkled and I thought I straighten it out in Photoshop – was a dumb assumption, gave me tons of extra work – next time I’ll iron it or choose a paper backdrop.