I’m used to working with what I have on hand; I was a working photographer at the same time that I was a broke college student, so I have experience inventing/building what I need as opposed to buying it whenever possible.

And as I said last time, I’m used to working with a P&S part of the time, out of convenience or chance.  I got some feedback on that post and it seems that others out there can relate.

So I got to thinking, “Let’s take this a step further – what else do we have to work with?”  The answer is – space.

We all have space, usually in limited quantities and strange configurations that lead us to quickly decide that it isn’t well suited to photography.  So instead of using our space, we sit around and bemoan our lack of a studio to work in.

Most of us don’t need studios.  As much as I’d love to have one, right now even I don’t really need one.  I’m lucky enough to have a huge living room with 10′ ceilings in my apartment, which generally goes unused.  I can set up a backdrop and lights and have just enough room to do what I need.

But how about those of you who don’t have backdrops and studio gear, who simply have a camera, a single artificial light source (strobe, work light, living room lamp), and an average room?  Can you still make good portraits?

Frankly, that’s not the question I’m interested in asking, because I know what the answer is- of course you can!  What I really want to know is, given an average room and a single artificial light source, how many portraits can you make?

(I keep saying “artificial light source” for a reason; so long as you’re shooting during the daytime, you are guaranteed to have the sun as a natural light source.  So really, with both the sun and an artificial light, you have two lights to work with.)

In my living room, the answer turns out to be at least nine.  My living room is large, but also rather featureless, and shows a surprising dearth of furniture.  Since I’m also plagued with a lack of models, I used my girlfriend, Mandy.  I shot everything with my wide angle lens and a single off-camera Speedlight through a white umbrella.

If you don’t have strobes, use a regular lamp.  Take off the lampshade for hard, direct light; keep the lampshade on for semi-diffused light; and put a white bed sheet between the bare lamp and the subject for a softbox effect.

Keep in mind that these were shot quickly as the light was fading outside.  On an afternoon with bright sunlight streaming into the room, the images would come out entirely different.  In another room, they’d look entirely different.  The point here is that there are many variables, all of which can be manipulated to achieve a new set of images.

So there you have it – simple and requiring no fancy tools and no specialized space.  Anyone can do this, with any camera, in any room.