Studios fall in to two main categories, Commercial and Private Hire.
Commercial being where the owner is usually the photographer and uses the studios for his own work and business, he should be covered by his own insurance and Public Liability Insurance against injury to any visitor to his premises.
My concern is about all those Private Hire studios, this is a studio that anyone can hire for a few pounds per hour, where most amateur photographers and video-graphers are let lose in a mine-field of disasters just waiting to happen.
So I have put together a few simple rules that all your visitors should adhere to when informed by yourself which could prevent you being sued or even worse some-one on your premises getting injured or killed, this happening will effectively finish off your business overnight, so it's worth a little thought.
Very rarely do you get a photographer or video-grapher come to the studios by themselves and you would be surprised by the number that bring alcohol on to the premises, Alcohol, cables and hot lights do not mix.
The first thing I do when hiring out my studio is take the visitors around the studios to show them all the exits, fire extinguishers and how to raise the alarm should the need arise.
I then give them some simple instructions on using the equipment e.
g.
don't use non-standard gels or scrims on the lighting, doing so can cause a fire.
Ensure there is safety glass or scrims (a fine wire mesh in front of the bulbs) video lighting has a nasty habit if exploding the bulb when it blows, the last thing you want is your beautiful model being showered with hot glass.
In my studio I went to a lot of effort to ensure that there are more than adequate plug sockets so that it was not necessary to run any lighting cables across the path of you or your model.
Ensure that if an extension cable has to be used that it is completely unrolled, electricity running through a tightly wound cable drum will cause it to overheat and even melt the cable, which will cause a fire.
If you have a shower set in you studio, ensure that any sockets are well out of reach and splash.
All the lighting over my shower set has a Perspex screen, this is 100% safe.
At the end of the day, common sense should rule.