In the old days they called them ‘studies’. To build a painting composition you’d sketch it out and then start gathering the visual data by visiting the setting if that made sense, posing models and doing sketches of them, and scrounging up wardrobe.
Then you’d do color studies or whatever other dry run made sense before painting the actual composition as a finished work.
Those are still the steps, but now the staging can be helped along digitally. As always there are upsides and downsides. Doing the studies builds skill and supports focus while giving the artist more time to contemplate the impact of those elements on the final painting. I like having this option.
Digital staging can save time but can also distance the artist from the facts. That must be why for the most part, paintings from the really good artists in prior centuries can seem so much more authentic.
These are some modern examples of staging.
The photo shoots I’ve done have been focused on the model and not the setting or the clothing. Those, I provide later.