Inside The Neon: The Batcave-Inspired Studio We Brought to Nottingham

There is a studio in Los Angeles that photographers talk about in a certain tone of voice. You have seen it even if you have never heard of it: a vast drive-in space wrapped in a ceiling of pure light, the room that stood in for the Batcave in Christopher Nolan's Batman films and has quietly appeared behind some of the biggest campaigns and film sets of the last twenty years. The first time I saw pictures of it, I had one thought: why does nothing like this exist in the UK?

So we built one. In Nottingham.

Meet The Neon

The Neon is part of Story + Space, the content studio complex in Colwick, Nottingham. Around 1,900 square feet of drive-in studio: black walls, polished concrete, 2.4 metres of access, and the thing that gives the room its name: a full ceiling of smart RGB panels that can turn the entire space any colour you can think of. Pure white lightbox one minute, magenta the next, deep red after that. No gels, no rigging, no waiting. The room itself is the light.

To be clear about what The Neon is, because I get asked: it is not part of my photography studio. My shoots live next door at Bailey Studio. The Neon is a Story + Space room, built for hire. Photographers, filmmakers, brands, and productions book it directly through Story + Space.

Putting the room through its paces with Jasmine Dawn

A room like this needed a proper first test, and I knew exactly who to point a camera at. Jasmine Dawn is an online coach who has built a community of hundreds of thousands of women by making strength training feel doable for people with full lives: busy women who want to drop body fat and build real strength without living in a gym. Her following has just passed 442,000 and is still climbing by the week. She runs a YouTube channel full of genuinely useful training breakdowns, and trains like she means it. If you are going to test a room built for bold images, you bring someone whose whole brand is about showing up strong.

We started in pure white. This is the mode that made the LA original famous: the entire ceiling becomes one enormous softbox, light wraps from above and bounces off the concrete, and shadows almost cease to exist. Against the black walls it strips an image back to almost nothing. Shape, skin, line. Half the frames from this part of the shoot are barely a step from monochrome, and that is the room doing it, not a preset.

Then we started turning the dial. Magenta first, then a deep red that swallowed the whole room. Same space, same subject, sixty seconds apart, and three completely different shoots. That is the thing that separates The Neon from every white-cyc and blackout studio in the country: the room changes character faster than you can change a lens.

Who the room is for

The drive-in access is the giveaway: cars, bikes, and anything else you can roll through the door, shot under a ceiling that behaves like a giant colour-programmable softbox. But the tyre marks on the concrete only tell half the story. Music videos. Product launches and reveals. Fashion and fitness campaigns that want the lightbox look without flying to LA. Creators who want one location that shoots like ten.

The Neon is hired by the day, by enquiry. If you have a project that belongs under that ceiling, talk to the team at Story + Space: start an enquiry here, or see the room in detail on The Neon's page.

As for Jasmine: go and see what she is building at @jasminedawnpt. Some people you photograph once and immediately start planning the next one. This was one of those shoots, and the room had a lot to do with it.