How I bring the studio to your house

By Deep Arora · Still & Golden Photography · Frankston & South-East Melbourne

I don’t have a studio. Not because I couldn’t rent one, but because I’ve watched what happens when a family arrives at one: everyone is dressed up, slightly late, and behaving like guests. Twenty minutes gone before anyone looks like themselves.

So the studio comes to you. Here is what that actually involves, because “in-home” can mean anything from a genuine setup to someone turning up with a phone.

What fits in the bag

Less than you’d think, and more than it looks.

• A full-frame camera and two or three fast lenses. Fast means they work in the dim corner of a bedroom at 4pm in July, which is where a lot of the good photographs live.
• A strobe and a large modifier. Folded down it’s the size of a music stand. Opened, it produces something close to a big soft window, which matters on a grey Melbourne afternoon when your actual window isn’t enough.
• A neutral backdrop. For when you want the clean, timeless frame with nothing behind it — the one people imagine when they picture a studio.
• Wraps, a beanbag and a few simple neutrals for newborn work, all washed between families.
• Two memory cards, written to simultaneously. If one fails mid-session, nothing is lost. Your photos exist twice before I leave your driveway.

Do you actually need a studio for newborn photos?

No — and this is the question I get asked most, usually apologetically, as if the house is the problem.

A studio gives a photographer total control of light and a cupboard full of props. That is a genuine advantage, and studio newborn work can be beautiful. What it costs you is context: the photographs could have been taken anywhere, by anyone, of any baby.

At home you get the opposite trade. The light is whatever your windows give us, which I supplement when needed. But the nursery is the actual nursery. The blanket is the one your mum knitted. In ten years the background is the part that will stop you — that was our first house, that was the corner where the bassinet went.

Ten minutes, and your lounge room is the set

When I arrive I walk through the house once, looking at windows. Not at the tidiness — at which rooms have soft light and which have none. That walk decides everything, and it takes about two minutes.

Then we might move a chair, pull a lamp out of frame, or push the couch a foot away from the wall. That’s usually the extent of it. If we’re using the backdrop it goes up in a few minutes and comes down just as fast. If the day is bright and the windows are generous, the gear stays in the bag entirely.

You don’t need to prepare. There’s a longer piece on this in preparing your home for a newborn photo session, but the summary is: clear one surface, open the blinds, and leave the rest.

What that means for your day

This is the part that sells itself to anyone with a newborn or a toddler.

• No drive. No car seat, no parking, nobody asleep on arrival.
• Feeds and nappy changes happen where they normally happen. We simply pause.
• Everything you might need is already there — the spare outfit, the right dummy, the specific toy.
• Your toddler has somewhere to go when they’ve had enough of me, and they come back.
• Nobody is on their best behaviour, which is the whole point.

Around minute twenty, most families forget I’m there. That is when the session actually starts.

What about small, dark or rented houses?

Small is fine. I’ve photographed newborns in one-bedroom flats and the pictures are indistinguishable from the ones taken in big houses, because a photograph of a baby is mostly baby.

Dark is a lighting problem, and lighting problems are solvable — that’s what the strobe is for. Rented is irrelevant; I’m not photographing the property.

The only genuine constraint is space to stand back a couple of metres somewhere with light. Almost every home has that, usually in the main bedroom.

When outdoors is the better call

I’m not evangelical about it. Older kids who need to run, extended family that won’t fit in a lounge room, or a family who simply love the beach — those sessions belong outside, and I bring the same approach to a park. There’s a walkthrough of that in what actually happens at an outdoor mini session.

What doesn’t change either way is the method: no posing you into shapes, no forced smiles, and the photographs are of your family rather than of my setup.

Where I travel

Based in Cranbourne East, with travel included across Frankston, Chelsea, Seaford, Langwarrin, Mt Eliza, Cranbourne and the surrounding south-east suburbs. The gear fits in the car with room for a pram, which is just as well — I have two small children of my own.