A little while ago I grabbed my phone and recorded a quick thought for my Daily Life of ST Images Instagram page.
Nothing planned. Nothing scripted. Just something I'd been noticing around the Sunshine Coast that I thought was pretty interesting.
Content studios seem to be popping up everywhere.
And the more I thought about it afterwards, the more I realised the interesting part isn't really the studios themselves.
It's why they're appearing.
Content studios are suddenly everywhere on the Sunshine Coast
Over the last few years we've seen a growing number of purpose-built photography, video and content creation spaces opening across the Sunshine Coast.
There's 11.11 Studios in Noosaville, Base Studio Noosa, Havana Haus in Coolum, Luma Space in Buderim, Zari Studio at Baringa and Nook Collective, among others.
And I'm sure there are more I've missed.
These spaces vary quite a bit.
Some have multiple styled rooms and sets. Others have large open studio areas, cycloramas, podcast facilities or spaces specifically designed for businesses and creators to produce batches of content.
As a commercial photographer and videographer, they're obviously great spaces for people like me to work in.
But photographers aren't the only people using them.
Businesses are.
And that's the part worth paying attention to.
Why are all these studios opening?
Nobody spends serious money fitting out photography studios, podcast rooms and content spaces because they think people might occasionally want a nice photo.
They're being built because the demand for visual content has changed enormously.
Businesses now need photography and video for:
websites
Instagram and Facebook
LinkedIn
reels and short-form video
advertising
email campaigns
product launches
Google listings
staff and recruitment
sales presentations
ongoing brand marketing
And unlike years ago, when a business might organise one big photography shoot and live off those photographs for several years, there is now an expectation that brands continually show up with something new.
That's where I think these Sunshine Coast content studios are really interesting.
They're a physical sign of what's happening in marketing.
Businesses are creating more content, more regularly.
Some seriously good content studios have appeared locally
We're pretty spoilt for choice now on the Sunshine Coast.
11.11 Studios in Noosaville has a collection of purpose-built spaces designed for photography, video, podcasting and content production.
Havana Haus in Coolum Beach offers a variety of environments for photography, video and podcast production.
Base Studio Noosa provides another flexible creative studio option around Noosaville.
Further south, Luma Space in Buderim has photography, video and cyclorama studio options, while Zari Studio in Baringa provides a private content space with a variety of different looks available within one location.
Nook Collective has also incorporated content and podcast facilities into its broader creative and coworking environment.
What's interesting to me isn't simply that we've got some good studios to choose from.
It's that there are enough businesses wanting this type of space for all of these studios to exist.
That's probably a pretty good indicator of where things are heading.
If you're not creating content, your competitors probably are
That was really the main point I was making in the original video.
If you're running a business and you're not thinking about creating good-quality content consistently, there's a fairly good chance one of your competitors is.
It doesn't matter too much what industry you're in.
You might operate accommodation or tourism.
You could be building a product brand.
You might run a building company, professional service, restaurant, wellness business, retail store or something completely different.
Customers are researching businesses online long before they make contact.
And they're making decisions based on what they see.
Imagine two businesses offering essentially the same quality of product or service.
One has a strong website filled with great photography, professional video and recent content showing what they actually do.
The other has some fairly ordinary photographs taken five years ago and a social account that gets updated every couple of months.
From the customer's side, those businesses can look completely different.
Even if the actual service behind them isn't.
Your photography should reflect the quality of what you're selling
This is particularly important on your website.
If you're selling a high-quality product or service, your photography and video need to support that.
You can build an amazing accommodation property, manufacture a fantastic product or offer the best service in your industry.
But a potential customer looking at your business online can't experience any of that yet.
They have to make a judgement from what you've put in front of them.
That's where professional photography and video become incredibly valuable.
Good visuals don't make a bad business good.
But they can help a genuinely good business look as good online as it actually is in real life.
And when somebody is comparing several businesses side by side, that matters.
Does that mean everything needs to be professionally photographed?
Absolutely not.
That's probably the other important part of this conversation.
The video that started this whole article was literally me grabbing my phone and talking into it.
No lighting setup.
No cinema camera.
No production crew.
Just an idea I wanted to get out there.
And I actually think businesses should do plenty of that.
Phone content can be brilliant for social media.
It can show what's happening behind the scenes, introduce staff, answer questions, share ideas and give people a feel for the humans behind the business.
Sometimes a slightly rough phone video is actually more effective because it feels immediate and genuine.
Where I think businesses get the best results is by combining that with professionally produced material.
Quality in the right places
This is probably the simplest way I'd describe it.
You don't need a photographer following you around every day.
You need quality in the right places.
Your main website imagery should be strong.
Your hero video should look great.
Important advertising campaigns should look professional.
Your key products, accommodation, people and services should be represented properly.
Then around that foundation you can create plenty of your own everyday social content.
That's the sweet spot.
Professional photography and video give the brand a strong visual backbone.
Phone content gives you frequency, personality and the ability to keep showing up.
The two aren't competing with each other.
They work together.
Consistency might be more important than ever
One of the words I kept coming back to in the original video was consistency.
It's difficult to build a recognisable brand if every photograph looks completely different.
Or if the website looks polished but the rest of the marketing doesn't resemble it at all.
A good professional shoot should give a business more than a handful of hero images.
Ideally, you're creating a useful library.
Wide images for websites.
Vertical images and video for social media.
Details.
People.
Products.
Locations.
Behind-the-scenes material.
Different compositions and crops.
Potentially enough material to use across months of marketing.
You can then keep adding more informal material yourself between shoots.
This is also where content studios can make a lot of sense.
Instead of travelling between five different locations, you can sometimes create several different looks in one space and build a substantial amount of material in a relatively short period.
The studios are the clue
For me, that's the bigger story behind all these Sunshine Coast content studios.
They're not really the story.
They're the clue.
They're the writing on the wall that businesses are placing more importance on photography, video and ongoing content.
People are investing in these studios because businesses are using them.
Businesses are using them because visual marketing has become a much bigger part of staying visible and competitive.
And I can't really see that slowing down.
If anything, I'd expect businesses to need even more content over the next few years.
The challenge will be creating enough of it without sacrificing quality.
What should a Sunshine Coast business actually do?
I don't think the answer is to suddenly try to turn your business into a media company.
Start with the important stuff.
Make sure the photography and video on your website properly represent the quality of what you do.
Build a professional library of images and video that can be used throughout your marketing.
Then use your phone regularly for the everyday stuff.
Show your work.
Show your people.
Share useful information.
Talk to customers.
And when that professional library starts feeling dated, add to it.
You don't necessarily need endless content.
You need good content, used consistently.
And looking at the number of content studios appearing around the Sunshine Coast, I'd say plenty of businesses have already worked that out.
Commercial photography and video on the Sunshine Coast
I've been working as a professional photographer for more than 20 years, creating photography and video for tourism businesses, accommodation providers, brands and businesses across the Sunshine Coast, Queensland and Australia.
For me, a commercial shoot isn't simply about producing a few nice photographs.
It's about working out what the business needs and creating a library of photography and video that can actually be used across websites, social media, advertising and ongoing marketing.
Sometimes that's photographed at a business location.
Sometimes we're outside somewhere in the Sunshine Coast landscape.
And increasingly, a purpose-built content studio might be exactly the right place to create it.
Thankfully, we've now got some pretty good ones to choose from.
Need fresh photography or video for your business?
If you're looking to build a stronger library of photography and video for your website, social media or marketing, you can see a selection of my recent commercial work here:
View my commercial photography and video portfolio →
https://www.stimages.com.au/commercial-shoots