Case Study: A Bourke Road Photographic Studio in Alexandria 2015

A 640 square metre two-stage content studio in a sawtooth warehouse conversion on Bourke Road, Alexandria NSW 2015, was losing money to dust it could not see until the images came back from the retoucher. This is what we changed, what it cost, and what happened over the following six months. Client details are withheld at the studio request; the site, scope and figures are otherwise as recorded.

The site

A large stage with a white infinity cove, a smaller product stage, three edit suites lined with acoustic fabric panel, a prop and set store, a client lounge, a shared kitchen used for catering, a makeup station and two bathrooms. Original timber floors through the office end, sealed concrete on the stages, exposed steel trusses and sawtooth glazing overhead, and a roller door onto the street for vehicle work. Five to six bookings a week, mostly apparel and homewares catalogue plus occasional food.

The problem

The studio had been on a generic commercial contract for two years — one visit a week, Thursday morning, a vacuum and a mop. Two failures compounded:

Dust was settling on product between styling and capture. Sawtooth glazing and steel trusses were never cleaned, the cove floor was dry-swept which put fibre straight back into the air, and the previous cleaner used an aerosol furniture polish in the lounge that carried through the roller-door draught.
Cleaning had no relationship to the booking calendar. A Friday client would arrive to a kitchen still holding Wednesday catering, a green room with used towels and a bathroom that had been through two crews since the Thursday visit.

The studio manager estimated four to six additional retouching hours a week attributable to dust, and had lost one repeat client the previous quarter over presentation.

What we changed

Method switched to low-dust: HEPA-filtered vacuums throughout, no dry sweeping anywhere on site, no aerosols of any kind, and top-down sequencing so the cove floor is always the last surface touched
Quarterly high-level program added for trusses, sawtooth glazing reveals, pendant fittings and top ledges, with a dated photo set after each pass
Written handling protocol agreed for the cove, matte black walls, acoustic panels and floor cabling — what gets dusted dry, what gets touched at all, and what gets reported instead of cleaned
Base program moved to three visits a week, timed to the calendar rather than a fixed day
Turnaround cleans introduced between bookings — a 60 minute reset of kitchen, green room, makeup station, bathrooms and stage floor, booked off the studio schedule
Set-build days scoped separately as project cleans, because MDF dust and paint splatter are not a nightly-visit problem

The result

Dust-related retouching flagged by the post team fell from a standing weekly item to two isolated instances across the following six months, both traced to a set build rather than the cleaning program. Client-facing turnaround complaints stopped once the resets were tied to bookings. The fixed monthly figure landed about 22 percent above the old contract, inside our standard Alexandria studio band of $40 to $55 per hour, and the studio manager reported it recovered inside the first quarter on retouching hours alone. The contract continues on month-to-month terms.

Case study FAQs

What kind of facility was this?

A two-stage commercial photographic and content studio in a converted sawtooth warehouse on Bourke Road, Alexandria 2015. Roughly 640 square metres across a large cove stage, a smaller product stage, three edit suites, a prop store, a client lounge, a shared kitchen and two bathrooms, running five to six client bookings a week.

What was going wrong?

Two things. Airborne dust was landing on product between the shot being set and the shot being taken, costing retouching hours on every catalogue job. And the studio was being cleaned on a fixed weekly slot that had no relationship to the booking calendar, so clients regularly walked into a kitchen and green room left from the previous shoot.

What did the new program change?

The base clean moved to a low-dust method — HEPA-filtered vacuuming, no dry sweeping, no aerosol product, top-down sequencing with the cove floor last. Turnaround cleans were added between bookings, triggered by the studio calendar rather than by a fixed day. And a written handling protocol was agreed for the cove, matte walls, acoustic panels and cabling so nothing was cleaned in a way that caused damage.

What did it cost?

The program priced within our standard Alexandria studio band of $40 to $55 per hour. The fixed monthly figure came in around 22 percent above the previous generic contract, and the studio recovered that in reduced retouching hours inside the first quarter.

What was the outcome?

Dust-related retouching flagged by the post team dropped from a recurring weekly complaint to two isolated instances in six months. Client-facing turnaround issues stopped entirely once turnaround cleans were tied to the booking calendar. The contract remains ongoing on month-to-month terms.

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