Professionals in every field are interested in doing projects in places where the costs are lower.

The film productions companies have gone to Canada, Czech Republic, Romania, and elsewhere to shoot films and do post-production work.

I suppose that there is a base of knowledge out there that can be a resource for photographers who are interested in shooting photographs of models in countries where modeling fees and location costs are lower than they are "at home."

Can anyone recommend locations outside of New York where the pool of modeling talent and indoor locations (e.g., studios, apartments, hotel rooms) are good and significantly more economical?

Of course, this thread takes into account that models and location managers/owners/leaseholders are treated with dignity and paid fairly.

Models are welcome to share their experiences about how local conditions have been beneficial to them.  (E.g., photographers may flock to their region and given them plenty of work because studio rents and other local costs are lower).

Likewise, individuals who own or manage studios or other indoor locations are welcome to share their experiences about how local conditions have been beneficial to them.  (E.g., photographers may flock to their region because modeling fees are lower, food and local transportation costs are lower, etc.)

Thank you!

well I have to say this is a first... a New Yorker looking to work *gasp* outside New York? (I'm just kidding...mostly)

At any rate, studio and location fees typically go exponentially lower the further you get from New York in the tri-state area (depending which three states you want to consider the tri-state that can be NY/PA/NJ or NY/Conn/NJ)

In my experience...real commercial productions of still photography are seriously hampered by going out of country or across borders.  Any time you cross national borders it quickly becomes impossible to do things like get last minute shipments of merchandise, reliably get film back from labs on time, or even to reliably get all your shoot's key people there (people getting turned away at borders and equipment getting held up in customs).

My experience in shooting outside NYC is that there are many great locations across this country, but several that most people use all the time.  The keys to selecting an out of city location are typically factors of support.  How large is your shoot? Do you need 10 hotel rooms or 200? If you need 200, are there 200 hotel rooms in the city you're thinking of going to?  Is there proper FedEx or UPS service to the city you're considering or is it so far out in the sticks that they only offer a limited schedule?  Is the hotel going to have internet service or can you get internet service nearby?  Is there a real photography supply nearby or would you have to wait on shipments from NY?  Is there a local base of models in case of last minute cancelations?

As far as studios, you do have to go to cities usually to find studios, but every mid to large sized city has studios available for rent.

As you can see I'm located in Philadelphia...I make that my home and the home of my studio.  Rent here is cheaper, thus I can offer studio rental at a much cheaper rate than I could if I were in NYC.  This is a large enough city that there are real camera shops (Calumet and Webb Cam) who offer real photography equipment and rentals.  FedEx and UPS are on a more than full time schedule here with multiple pickup times and saturday deliveries everywhere.  There is a pool of local talent including local agencies who are well known in the business.

I'd actually challenge someone to produce a shoot cheaper or easier than Philadelphia, but no one's taken me up on the offer.

Actually an interesting question on several levels... as I work from the UK [North of England] but flights are sooooo cheep, cheep, cheep across a lot of Europe from here I could pack myself + 2 or 3 models, and go off to some place else, including a week in a decent hotel, cheaper than I could even just transport myself and them to London [without the hotel bill on top].

Lots of places to do outside beach work, and even beach nudes, which is not practical in the UK for most of the year [even though it is quite legal] but work that can be done virtually any time in, say, the Canary Islands or Spain. Most of the time also no problems shooting at the hotels, themselves, either.

Getting things in and out does not require customs clearances and crossing borders within Europe is absolutely no problem.

From NY there is always the Caribbean to operate in on more or less the same basis.

A lot of the thrust of the question has to be answered in the context of what kind of shooting you want to do and what kind of locations you have in mind.

Studio36