Hotel room for a studio shoot?

It's winter where I live and I don't have access to studio space. Is it conceivable to rent a hotel room for some studio shooting?

You probably need to give more details about what you want to do. Many here have rented a room for a budhoir session so its possible. But studio shoot means many different things, level of gear, and number of participants.

Have you tried Craigslist? I see studio rentals for $30+ per hour, with discounts when rented for the full day. Quite often they even include the use of props and lighting equipment.

Just looking at two photographers and one model. With a couple off camera flashes on stands.

I'll check out craigslist, but a hotel room for ~$100 for a whole day seems like a good deal.

You might investigate what they will charge you to use one of their otherwise idle meeting rooms...

• roomy
  
• high ceiling
  
• as empty as you need for your shoot
  

You should be able to negotiate a rental through airbnb as well. Might offer more interesting spaces than a hotel.

Hotel rooms are often very cramped even if you have a sitting area, and ceilings are quite low. While that might be pretty good for flash work, you just have to be careful of color casting, because you will have potentially 3 light sources to deal with (artificial light, natural light, flash).

Personally, it would be better, I would think, to find something a bit more open, so you can have room to work and add props, etc. Having a changing room is a plus in a hotel room though.

I wonder if a hotel would rent out a presidential style suite for just an hour or two for $100? Probably not, because they would have to run their cleaning crew through that once you left. You might have better luck with a conference room at a hotel for an hour or two.

If I owned a local camera shop, I would make sure I had enough real estate to set up 3-4 studios. It would be a revenue stream, as well as possibly renting out used equipment and increased new equipment sales.

We have used several room for boudoir style shoots. One local hotel near the airport as "Meeting Rooms" these are rooms that offer a queen size bed in a room with a door, and then the larger sitting area has a conference table large enough for 12. We have requested they remove the table and they are more then happy to do so, this gives us space to set up a backdrop as well as using the bedroom.

A $100 room is probably going to be a tight space. I would look into a larger room at a nice hotel. Perception comes into play when using hotels. Your images may be amazing but a model might think twice about meeting at a Super 8 vs someplace nicer.

Thanks to all for the perspectives. That gives me more to consider.

Also keep in mind that some hotels have little tolerance for monkey business so unless you disclose what you are up to, uou should be discreet about it.

I have used higher end boutique hotels in Houston for boudoir shoots, but not a normal portrait shoot. Some hotels won't allow you to use any space outside of the room rented.

We have several rental studios here as well that can be rented for photo shoots on an hourly rate. Hourly rates start at $40.00 per hour and some even include lighting in the rental.