I gotta say I typically avoid classic Manitoba socials, mostly because people avoid making them interesting. So for my sister's wedding social I wanted to add something different.
I have actually seen and heard about a 'photo booth' being at lots of parties, like weddings and fundraisers, but had never seen one at a social, nor operated one myself. This particular social proved to be interesting because the themes of the party were 'cheezy' and 'retro'. With an 80's, Johnston-school-portraits-style laser backdrop, plastic flowers and a few wedding dress/jackets as props, people had no trouble getting into it, which made it a blast for me.
Technically speaking it was easier than I had thought as well. A soft box (camera left) and one speedlight (back right, set to optical slave, with a flag attached to prevent spill on the backdrop, keeping it black) were enough to make it look nice but still uncluttered so that no lights were knocked over by people who were having a little too much fun.
To present the images to the inebriates as I was shooting I tethered my camera to a laptop and used Sofortbild, a freeware program which imported them to a desktop folder that was being watched by Lightroom. After about 15 seconds the shots would come up in Lightroom, but with the 'lights' dimmed, so it just looked like a slideshow. I also had the images go through a post processing preset before they popped up, making them look quite finished. The added benefit was that I could easily batch rename the photos to each sitter's name so that
I could identify and e-mail them out a couple of
days later. See it was also a fundraising tool- two bucks got you a few, low res, cheezy-but-better-than-you-could-take pics of you and your friends goofing off at a party. You know, profile pic stuff...... but better. Not everyone was loose enough to give it a go, but those that did had a better night for it.
I learned that photography applied to anything equals fun times!
posted by Duncan McNairnay
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