My Workspace

After moving from Amsterdam to a smaller, quieter, cleaner, and more gezellig Dutch town, I had the chance to build my new studio from scratch in a bigger space. I’d always dreamed of a comfortable spot under the roof of my house, something between a proper room and an attic (because attics are cool, okay). In my head it was always beautifully filled with my favorite junk: computers, photography gear, a vinyl player, and a coffee machine. Maybe even a tiny glass-door fridge for cold drinks. Well, that dream is finally coming true. I planned this studio down to the last detail. Here’s how it turned out.

The Attic

Everything is arranged for easy access. There are multiple power sockets on every wall and wired Ethernet within reach. There’s enough open floor space to set up a tripod, backdrop, and lights whenever I need them. There’s a window, which I value for fresh air, daylight, and the occasional reminder that the outside world exists. I can run the smart lights dim when I’m working and bright when my eyes have had enough.

Two Desks

One desk is where I work on my Mac, the other is where I play video games on my PC and consoles. They were briefly a single setup trying to do both jobs, until I realized I was spending more evenings hunting for the perfect KVM switch and returning displays that didn’t get on with macOS (because of its outrageous UI scaling system) than doing anything I could put in a portfolio. So: two desks.

I spend a lot of time in front of these computers, editing photos, researching, designing, or gaming, so comfort wasn’t optional. I gave up on a height-adjustable desk whose height I adjusted exactly zero times in four years and built two fixed ones at the right height instead, which saved me money and the ongoing guilt of not using a feature I’d paid for. Both displays sit on monitor arms, so I can set everything precisely for good posture.

The Gear

The cameras have a proper home: a dedicated shelf that takes up a good half of the large bookcase in my studio. In practice, one of them is usually on the work desk instead, because I’ve been offloading photos or cleaning a lens and haven’t carried it the two meters back to the shelf yet. There are a couple of compact cameras that sometimes live in my backpack, a workhorse for the real grown-up jobs, and a few older, odder things I keep simply because I like them, including a Soviet lens older than me that turns every background into a swirl and will never be sharp except in the dead center of the frame (it’s okay, baby, I accept you as you are).

The Aesthetics

The room is meant to feel welcoming, mostly to me and occasionally to a guest willing to climb that many stairs. Minimal but not boring, interesting but not cluttered, the furniture coordinated by material and color, which I did deliberately, because I’m a designer and can’t switch it off. I called the resulting look “Cappuccino”. Yes, I color-matched my own furniture and then gave the palette a name. And yes, I’m aware that it sounds great; you’re just jealous.

Not a single permanently connected cable is visible, and the ones tucked away are tied off with Velcro and routed properly. Tools, memory cards, and other small things make a room feel chaotic to me, so all of them are hidden, even the ones I use constantly. Some call it OCD; I call it the most functional part of my personality.

The Future

The studio isn’t finished yet. It may never be finished, a fact I made peace with somewhere around the third time I moved desks. There’s already a corner earmarked for a third, smaller desk, in case I fall far enough down the film rabbit hole to start scanning my own negatives at home. I’m not going the whole way and building a darkroom up here, though. Partly that’s me preferring to support local darkrooms, and partly it’s the more honest reason: I’m nowhere near ready to be left alone with chemicals in the dark. But the room is already somewhere I’m glad to spend my days, and glad to show you around.

I’ll post the occasional update whenever something in my studio changes significantly. If you’d like to follow along, subscribe to my Journal — it’s harmless, unlike GAS.