This is a simple lesson – but one I wish had known to begin with. It would have saved me lots of time and frustration.

“The Bat Cave” – do you need it?

I have a lot of people ask me how I get my space dark enough to take studio-style portraits.

What material do I use to block out the light from the windows? How dark does it need to be?

When I first started out, I was really paranoid about ambient light. I tried my hardest to block out any sliver of light coming in. However, I also found it really, really hard to find a focus on my subject – especially when I was doing some of the rim lighting for my maternity photos.

And then, forced by necessity one day when I simply couldn’t get my camera to focus, I turned on a lamp.

Wouldn’t you know it – it didn’t affect a thing (in the final shot) – but it sure made my life easier.

I suppose I should have realized this at the beginning. If you are testing your lights, and you forget to connect your camera to your strobes and fire a shot, you will see the image is completely black – even if you have the lights on and the curtains open.

But somehow, I didn’t make that connection. So, I’m hoping reading this will save you that hassle!

The image on the left is a photo of my studio space – with the exception of the light that is on above the backdrop, this is what it looks like during a session – even during the ‘moody’ maternity sessions, when we are playing with shadows and doing rim lighting!

The photo below was taken in the studio that was this bright.

The reason you can still get a dramatic shot in a fully lit space – studio lights sync at a speed of ~ 1/200th of a second. The ambient light isn’t bright enough to create an image on the camera sensor at that speed (assuming your ISO is set to 100, and you are shooting at an f-stop between 5.6 – 11)

Now, some folks may argue that if you have other lights sources, it may affect your white balance. For me personally, I haven’t ever run into this issue.

So – before you start setting up your studio space like a bat cave – do the test – leave all the lights on, your window open and fire a shot with your studio lights off. What do you see?

If it’s all black, which I expect it will be, stop worrying about creating a black zone!

Coming up next…catch lights…what are they, and why you should care about them!

P.S. Are you BRAND-NEW to studio lighting? Save yourself some time & money with my online bootcamp for beginners, where I show you exactly the equipment I use in the studio, and exactly how I set up my lights – (Learn from my trial & error!) – click for more details.

P.P.S. Have some studio experience but struggling with the business side of things? Check out Prairie Child’s, “Getting Down to Business” workbook, because running a photography business is only fun if you get paid…and anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or independently wealthy!

Miss lesson 2? Click here to read it

(want to jump ahead to Lesson #4?  I’ll still send it to you online, but you can skip ahead now:  Click here)