Neil of Aberdeen Photo Office setup

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This is my office. I run a small photography company providing weddings, portraits, commercial photography (specialising in real estate), and we also create websites. I have a studio, changing room, gallery, and another office in a converted school, and the other half of the building is my home. Although I work from home the appearance is that is only a business and the although the residential part is only through a door, it is not seen.

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The dominant element of my set up are the two LG38 widescreen monitors. We create a lot of books for weddings, events, and other commercial projects, and the book format is exactly 21:9, and the screen is exactly the size of the most popular option, 40x30cm which on a 2 page spread is 80x30cm, the screen size. When meeting with a client, I use mirror mode, and when working on my own, extended desktop. Both monitors are on Ergotron arms, and one has a keyboard and mouse tray so I can work standing up. Moom remembers where I like everything so it is very easy to have a neat set of windows.

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The screens are connected to the latest maxed out 2018 13 inch MBP. I use the Belkin Thuderbolt dock so there is only one cable to attach to the MacBook Pro. I tried a 15 inch but it was just too big as a portable. My assistant does most of the editing (on a max spec 27 inch iMac and second monitor), so I do not need as much power/ram as he does. Apart from one, all my Drobo, Synology drives, and printers are connected to a networked Mac mini in another office where the comms cabinet is.

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Behind my desk are cabinets and drawers so that everything can be kept tidy. The cabinets have either shelves or drawers

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I have one dedicated drawer with 10 chargers for charging camera and flash batteries.

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To the left and behind me, I have an IX500, a Dell laser printer, and 2 Demo label printers.

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On my desk there are:
2 LG38 inch monitors
Space grey keyboard, mouse, and trackpad
Neat Design Pano notebook
Anker QI charger for iPhone X
Alexa dot linked to my Sonos system and hue lights
An iPad 10.5 Pro with Smart keyboard an Apple Pencil, and a charger/holder
A cable management set up with a full set of cables - power supplies, Ethernet, USB -C, Mag safe (and adapter), and Lightning cables
Yealink T48G VOIP phone
Dymo labelwriter 400
Dymo Labelmanager PnP
A Scansnap ix500
An LG 42 inch 4K TV with Sky Q and Apple TV connected
A Hue lightship behind the TV
A Sonos Soundbar and 2 Sonos Play 3 (sub to be added soon)
Most of the storage is on the network but there are hard drives for clones, time machine, and a personal Drobo below the desk.

The space and setup works well as workspace and client meeting room. I previously used an iMac with second monitor, and a MacBook adorable as a portable. Although I miss the portability of the MacBook, I love having one machine as even with cloud syncing, there were times that things were in the wrong place, and the simplicity of one machine is great. When I travel, I use Duet and my iPad Pro to give me a 2 screen portable set up.

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Nice setup Neil!

How color accurate are the LG monitors if you’re doing your color correcting or does your assistant do that? What Belkin dock do you use or how are both monitors working off of one port?

Thanks for sharing!

Hi Jim
The LG38 is quite highly rated for colour accuracy (99% for SRGB gamut, and over 80% for Adobe RGB gamut) although that is not a huge issue for me as I do not do a lot of editing. I have calibrated the monitors, and I am very happy with the colour accuracy which is better than the Apple Cinema displays which these replaced.
I use the Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Express Dock HD and connect one monitor with a Display Port to Display Port cable and the other with a USB-C to Display Port cable.
I mainly got 2 for mirroring and when exhibiting, but using 2 as an extended desktop is fantastic. Moom is an essential app for this amount of screen space.

WOW! I think that about sums it up for me…

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