People usually choose a location from the pictures: they like the loft with the brick wall, so they book it. Then on the day it turns out the windows face south, the sun is in the lens from two o’clock onwards, the ceilings are two metres seventy, and someone next door is having the walls knocked through. The schedule slips, and instead of twenty frames you get eight.
Over nine years I’ve shot business portraits in all four types of location — studios on a cyclorama, meeting rooms squeezed into four square metres, lofts with six-metre windows, and offices where the lighting had to be built from nothing. Below is an honest comparison: what each location actually delivers in terms of light, how much time it eats in logistics, and when it earns its keep.
Here’s the thing up front: there’s no such thing as an ideal location. There’s a location that fits the job. A studio isn’t better than a loft — it solves a different problem.
Three criteria worth choosing by
Before comparing, let me set the frame. A location is judged not by how nice the interior looks but by three things.
Control over the light. Can I produce exactly the lighting pattern I need in this spot, and reproduce it two hours later and again next year? Controllability matters more than quantity. A dark room you can control beats a bright one you can’t.
Logistics. How much time goes on travel, unloading, rigging lights, permissions and moving furniture. That time isn’t billed separately, but you either have it in hand or you don’t.
Privacy. Who else will be in frame and behind the scenes. For senior management and for people who hate being photographed, this is often the deciding factor — more important than any interior.
Now, location by location.
The studio
Light. The most controllable of the four by a wide margin. Windows get blacked out with flags, the backdrop is whatever you want, the light is entirely under control. You’re not at the mercy of weather, time of day or season. Which is exactly why a studio lets me shoot one person in five different looks in two hours — that’s close to impossible anywhere else.
The flip side: artificial light reads as artificial. If you need the documentary feel of a real office, a studio won’t give it to you. The exception is a daylight studio with large windows — the light there is real, but you’re back at the mercy of the weather.
Logistics. Straightforward. There’s usually parking, a goods lift, a make-up room and sockets of adequate power. Rigging takes 30–50 minutes; in a studio I know well it’s faster, because the setups are already worked out. One downside: you almost always pay for the full hour of hire, even if you finish early.
What it’s for. Employee portraits in a steady stream, corporate avatars for websites and social media, a business portrait for a magazine cover, team shoots with consistent lighting across everyone.
What to check. Ceiling height of at least three metres — below that you can’t lift the light and get a soft pattern. The width of the doorways and the lift if you’re bringing equipment. Whether rigging time is included in the hire or billed separately.
Moscow benchmark: 1,500–6,000 ₽ per hour depending on district, floor area and reputation. Check prices directly — they change every season.
The client’s office
Light. The least predictable. The typical picture: windows on one side, ceiling panels above, and mixed colour temperature — 4000K tubes arguing with a 5500K window. Overhead light gives you a flat image and shadows under the eyes that can only be pulled back in retouching.
The advantage is that an office can’t be faked. A person at their own desk, with their own team behind them, builds trust more effectively than any cyclorama. For a founder’s personal brand and for photography for a company website, authenticity is often worth more than perfect light.
Logistics. The most expensive in time, even though the hire is free. It goes on: clearing access and passes, waiting for the meeting room to free up, moving furniture, explaining to staff what’s going on, and putting it all back afterwards. You can easily lose 40–50 minutes out of a two-hour shoot. There are often no usable sockets for strobes, and in older buildings the breaker trips.
What it’s for. Real working processes, a founder in their own office, a team in its usual environment, production. See the case study of an entrepreneur and investor portrait.
What to check. Which way the windows face, what time the sun hits them, whether furniture can be moved, whether there’s a room where someone can change and check their appearance, and whether colleagues have been warned — otherwise half your frames will have curious heads in the background.
The coworking space
Light. Usually better than the average office: modern spaces are designed with glass partitions and large windows. Plenty of natural light is good. Little control is bad — there’s nothing to black out the glazing with, and in the evening warm accent lighting comes on across the whole floor.
Logistics. The main problem isn’t light, it’s people. A coworking space is shared by definition: residents end up in frame, and you can’t guarantee quiet or privacy on site. Many venues ban tripods and serious lighting in the common areas, or require approval and the hire of a meeting room for the whole shoot.
What it’s for. Quick social media content, shoots with freelancers and small teams who need the feel of a real office without hiring a full studio.
What to check. Whether you can shoot with lights and tripods, whether there’s a meeting room with a window, when the floor traffic is lowest (usually before 10am and after 7pm), and whether commercial photography is permitted.
Benchmark: 1,000–2,500 ₽ per day for a day pass, or a meeting room by the hour.
The loft
Light. The most beautiful and the most treacherous. Full-height industrial windows give you a volume of light you won’t find anywhere else, along with textures you don’t have to build: brick, concrete, steel, timber. But it’s hard backlight: to get a usable portrait you have to tame it — diffusers on the windows, reflectors, added strobes. That takes time, and often there’s simply nothing to cover a large window with.
Logistics. Depends entirely on the venue: some have a proper goods lift and parking, others are on the fifth floor of an old factory with no lift at all. Lofts are cold in winter, the acoustics boom, and the heating is uneven. Hire costs more than a studio while giving you less control.
What it’s for. Shoots where the interior is part of the meaning: fashion brands, creative industries, campaign work, portraits with character. See the campaign shoot for a fashion designer.
What to check. The orientation and size of the windows, what time the sun comes into them, whether there’s anything to cover them with, how it’s heated, which floor it’s on and whether there’s a lift. And always — what the neighbours are doing: drilling next door gets onto the audio, which matters if you’re shooting video.
Benchmark: 3,000–10,000 ₽ per hour.
Side by side
| Criterion | Studio | Client’s office | Coworking | Loft |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Control over light | maximum | low | low | medium |
| Natural light | depends on the studio | often weak | good | excellent but uncontrollable |
| Others in frame | none | employees | residents | neighbours in the building |
| Time to rig the lights | 30–50 min | 40–60 min + approvals | 40–60 min | 40–60 min |
| Privacy | complete | moderate | low | depends on the venue |
| Parking and unloading | usually available | difficult | difficult | varies |
| Hire rate, ₽ | 1 500–6 000 | free | 1 000–2 500 per day | 3 000–10 000 |
Light depends on the windows, not on the type of location
Within any one type, the spread is wider than between types. A loft with a north-facing window is often better than a studio with a south-facing one. So look at the windows.
| Orientation | What it gives you | How to work with it |
|---|---|---|
| North | even, diffused light all day, it doesn’t change | ideal for portraits and shooting staff in a steady stream |
| South | plenty of light, but hard direct sun | diffusers and flags needed; blown highlights in summer |
| East | soft morning light, gone by midday | shoot before noon, strobes after that |
| West | weak daylight, beautiful evening light | second half of the day, but you run out of time |
Two parameters matter more than the interior:
Ceiling height. From three metres up you can lift the light and get a soft shadow. Lower than that and the source has to sit close, which makes shadows hard and dirty.
Electrics. A 500–1000 J strobe is a serious load. In offices and older buildings, find out where the sockets are and whether the breaker will trip mid-shoot. Cheap LED fixtures with flicker are a separate story: at short shutter speeds they put bands across the frame, and no amount of retouching fixes that.
Logistics: where the time and money actually go
Don’t count the cost of an hour’s hire. Count the cost of the shooting day.
Travel. Two locations in one day in Moscow reliably means an hour to an hour and a half in traffic and unloading. It’s often cheaper to work one location with four lighting setups than two “beautiful” ones. That’s exactly what I did on the Magnit management shoot: office and street, ten minutes per person, four lighting setups in one spot.
Rigging. An hour of hire is not an hour of shooting. Out of two hours in a studio you get about an hour and a half of actual camera time.
Throughput. If you’re shooting twenty employees, what decides the day isn’t how pretty the location is but how people flow through it: where they wait, where they change, where they check their appearance. Twenty people in one meeting room creates a queue and irritation — and it shows on their faces.
Hidden costs. Taxis and parking, an extra hour of hire for the pack-down, props and backdrops, and occasionally a venue’s fee for approving commercial photography.
How to choose for your task
| Task | Location |
|---|---|
| Avatars and team portraits in a steady stream | studio |
| Business portrait for a cover or a presentation | studio or loft |
| Founder’s personal brand | client’s office or loft |
| Real working processes, production | office, workshop, factory floor |
| Social media content for a small team | coworking or office |
| Fashion brand, creative industry | loft |
The logic is simple: the more the context matters, the closer you go to the real place; the more control matters, the closer you go to a studio.
Questions to ask the venue
Send this list before you book. It saves you a shooting day.
- What’s the ceiling height?
- Which way do the windows face, and what time does the sun come into them?
- Can the windows be covered, and are there black flags on site?
- How many sockets are there, and what’s the power rating?
- Is rigging time included in the hire or billed separately?
- Is there a goods lift, and how wide are the doorways?
- Is there parking, and where do we unload?
- Is there a room where someone can change and check their appearance?
- Is commercial photography allowed, and is there an extra fee for it?
- What are the neighbours doing — is anyone having work done?
- Can furniture be moved, and does it have to be put back?
- Are there time restrictions, e.g. closing at 6pm?
If a venue can’t answer these clearly, it’s probably being let for the first time, and you’ll be sorting all of it out on the day.
Three mistakes I see most often
A handsome interior mistaken for working light. A loft with designer furniture and south-facing windows can be a worse place for a portrait than a plain studio on the north side of town.
Saving on hire eats time. Shooting in the office is free, but forty minutes of furniture-moving and approvals costs more than an hour in a studio. If people have come to be photographed during working hours, their time is worth more than the hire fee.
Too many locations. Three spots in one day isn’t “variety” — it’s an hour and a half in the car and tired people by the third.
Questions clients ask me
Can you shoot decent business portraits in an office, without a studio?
Yes, if there’s a window and the furniture can be moved. I bring a compact kit: two lights, stands, an umbrella or a softbox. It takes up a corner of about three by three metres. The main thing is to warn your colleagues and keep that space free for two hours. More on this in content shoots in Moscow.
How many locations can you realistically shoot in a day?
Two, if they’re close together. One location with four lighting setups gives you more variety than two spots with one setup each.
What if the office is dark and cramped?
Shoot tight portraits by the window with a reflector, and pick up the rest in a studio on a separate day. Or take the team to a studio for two hours — often cheaper than stretching the shoot across the office for a whole day.
Do I need a studio if I’ve got a good loft?
If the loft has windows you can control and something to cover them with, no. If it doesn’t, you’ll be bringing a studio to the loft anyway, just with extra hire on top.
How long does rigging the lights take?
40–60 minutes at the first location, 20–30 at the second. That’s the time to budget on top of your shooting hours, and it’s the thing almost nobody remembers when booking.
The bottom line
If the task is to photograph people quickly and predictably, book a studio. If the environment and trust matter, use the client’s office. If you need a “live” look on a small budget, a coworking space. If the interior carries meaning, a loft.
And in every case: windows and ceiling height first, furniture and brick walls second. A beautiful room with bad light delivers good frames about half the time. A room with controllable light delivers them almost always.
If you’d rather not work through the venues yourself, get in touch — I’ll pick a location for your task and send you options where I’ve already tested the light.
