New Lights for the Shop

What do you call your shop? Woodshop, Woodworking Shop, Man (or woman) Cave, Studio? I have always just gone with the simple “shop” moniker.

“Honey, I’ll be in the shop!”
“C’mon Alex, let’s go to the shop.”
“This weekend? Oh I hung out in my shop and got a whole lot of nothing done.”

It is a generic term of endearment for me. My shop serves so many purposes beyond woodworking and like one of my favorite (now defunct) woodworking podcasters said “it is like a clubhouse”. Except I added a little something to my shop recently that is making me change my mind about all of this. It seems that with a new camera in the works, a second point of view camera, improved audio equipment, and now new lighting I need to start calling the shop a studio. That sounds so professional and makes me think I had better up my woodworking game to live up to that lofty title.

I have been plagued with poor video lighting from day one with such low ceilings so I sprung for a studio lighting kit that will allow me to shut off the overheads while I’m filming and ideally improve the overall quality of my videos, especially the detail shots. I think a little 3 point lighting is long overdue. I feel so grown up…now if I can just prevent myself from bumping into lights and tripping over cables I’ll be good.

Sorry about the poor photo stitching in this panoramic shot. It’s always hard to get it right in such a small space.