Stillwater Studio is a photography practice run by two people out of a single north-facing room on the top floor of an old works building. We have been in that room since 2013 and we have never wanted a bigger one.
This page is the longer answer to the questions people ask before they commission us: who we are, how the studio came about, how the work is actually organised, and what we are not good at. If you only need dates and numbers, the main page carries the rates and the contact page carries the diary.
How it started
In the winter of 2012 the top floor of Riverbend Works was a paper merchant’s storeroom with the windows painted out. It took two of us a fortnight with scrapers and a bucket of warm water to find out what was behind the paint: a bank of north-facing lights running the whole length of the long wall, the kind of even, patient daylight nobody builds into a building any more.
Neither of us had planned to start a studio that year. One of us was shooting product for a furniture importer on a rolling contract, the other was doing portrait work for a regional magazine that had begun to look shaky. We took the room on a short lease between us because it was cheap and because it was obviously a room for photographs, and we agreed to give it eighteen months before deciding whether it was a business or an expensive hobby. The first year brought eleven commissions. The second brought forty. We stopped counting the months after that.
The name is not a metaphor. There is a mill pond behind the works, fenced off and largely forgotten, and the street sign at the rear entrance still reads Stillwater Lane. We wrote it on the door in chalk while we were arguing about better names, and it stayed there long enough that clients started using it. The chalk has been repainted twice since, in the same handwriting, because the first sign-writer we asked wanted to improve it and we did not want it improved.
Very little else about the room has changed. We put a track of diffusion panels across the windows in 2015 so the daylight could be softened or cut without moving a stand. We painted the corner cyc in 2017 and have repainted it eleven times since, which is what happens to a white wall that people walk on. The long steel-topped table arrived second-hand from a bakery that closed and has taken more punishment than any camera we own. Everything else is stands, boxes, paper and a kettle.
There is no account manager here, no producer, and nobody who will take your brief and pass it to somebody you have not met. Whoever answers your first email is one of the two people who will be in the room on the day.
Partner · portraits and interiors
Trained as an architectural draughtsperson before picking up a camera, which is why the verticals on our interior work are straight and why she will spend twenty minutes moving a chair four inches. Shoots most of the portrait sittings and takes the lead on any job where a building is the subject.
Between us we have been photographing commercially for a little over thirty years. That is not a boast, it is context: most of what we know is a list of things that went wrong once and will not go wrong again, and a good deal of what you are buying is that list.
None of these are unusual. They are simply the things we will not trade away when a day gets tight, and knowing about them in advance tends to make the day go better.
The single biggest cause of an overrunning shoot is a decision that has to travel. We ask for one person who can say yes on the day, either standing at the monitor or watching the live tethered view from their own desk. Everything else can be discussed; that one point we push on.
Mostly the studio has stayed still on purpose. This is everything that was significant enough to remember.
| Year | What happened | Commissions |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Lease signed, windows stripped, first eleven jobs, mostly portraits for a magazine | 11 |
| 2014 | First product client on a rolling contract; the steel table arrives from a closed bakery | 40 |
| 2015 | Diffusion track fitted across the north windows; tethered capture becomes standard | 54 |
| 2016 | Interiors added as a third strand after two architects ask in the same month | 61 |
| 2017 | Corner cyc built and painted; first team headshot day, twenty-two people | 68 |
| 2018 | Medium-format body bought second-hand; catalogue work overtakes portraits by volume | 77 |
| 2019 | Dry studio hire offered on unbooked weekdays for the first time | 83 |
| 2020 | Remote art direction begins in earnest; the live tethered view is built out properly | 49 |
| 2021 | Colour-managed review sessions added so selects can be judged at full resolution | 72 |
| 2022 | Second tilt-shift lens; the archive is re-catalogued to a single naming convention | 86 |
| 2023 | Ten-year mark; rates published openly on the website for the first time | 88 |
| 2024 | Capture station rebuilt; delivery window shortened to ten to fourteen business days | 91 |
| 2025 | Lease renewed to 2032; the room stays as it is | 84 |
Twenty-eight feet by twenty-four in the shooting area, thirteen feet to the ceiling, north windows down the long wall and a painted cyc in the corner. Two abstract studies of the space below; there is a fuller description on the main page, and you are welcome to come and look at it in person.
Ranges of objects that have to look like they belong together. Rooms that have to be shown honestly rather than flattered. People who are not enjoying being photographed and would like it to be over quickly and painlessly. Libraries that need extending without a reshoot. Clients who know what the pictures are for, and clients who have no idea but are willing to be asked.
We are also comfortable being one supplier among several. If you have an agency, a designer and a print house already, we will work to their schedule, take direction on set, and deliver to whatever naming convention your asset manager needs.
Weddings and events. It is skilled work and it is not our skill, and we would rather hand you two names of people who do it properly. Fashion editorial with a large crew and a moving call sheet — we can make the pictures, but we are not set up to run the day. Anything that needs a studio available at forty-eight hours’ notice every week; our diary does not move that fast.
We also do not do reshaping retouching as standard. Ordinary clean-up is included on every finished frame. Changing how a person is built is a conversation we would rather have out loud than guess at.
Shared with permission and shortened at the writer’s request. There are more of these on the main page, and we can put you in touch with a reference directly if you are weighing up something large.
“I have commissioned photography for eighteen years and I have never had a studio ask me what the pictures were for before asking what the budget was. It changed the brief, and it changed the brief in a direction that cost less.”Brand manager · independent retailer
Two half days, six months apart, with a written shot list carried between them.
“We are four hundred miles away and we have never once been in that room. We watch the shoot on a screen, we say yes or no as the frames land, and it works exactly like standing behind them would. I still find it slightly unreasonable that it works.”Founder · small equipment maker
Four full product days a year, all art-directed remotely. See live tethered view.
Other pages
The site is four pages and a long one. Nothing is behind a form and nothing needs an account.
Selected work, the three kinds of commission we take, how a shoot runs, the full rate card, licensing in ordinary words, and the questions we are asked most often.
How remote art direction works here: watching the tethered feed in your browser through the shoot day, approving frames as they are taken, and reviewing full-resolution selects afterwards.
Addresses, telephone, studio hours, how to find the building, what to put in a first email, and a short enquiry form if that is easier than writing one.
What we hold, why, for how long, and who else ever sees it. Also the terms of business, the cancellation policy and our position on images of people.
Written by the two of us and last reviewed at the start of this year. If something on this page has gone out of date, telling us is a kindness.