Photo Booth pics

[tink20]

My DD is getting married in Oct. (country wedding in a huge beautiful barn) One of her friends had a photo booth at her wedding. The photographer took pictures of the guests with different fun props (so we would do western props), then printed a picture for the guest and gave it to them right then.

Also, the guests wrote a msg. to the couple. Then days later, he made a book with all the pictures and the msg. from the guests and gave it to the couple. We could use this guy, the only thing is its $1,000. We are already spending too much money for everything else. This would be a separate photographer from the one taking the wedding photos.

So, my question is...has anyone done something similar. The pictures are one picture with 4 different poses with a border around each. How would all this be done, is it doable? I know I could just do regular photos, but wondering if the photo booth style would be hard to do.

We thought the guests could be doing this, while they wait for the couple (to take wedding pictures) to get to the reception.

 

[Daisy14'sDH]

When theres not a lot of time involved, a pro would know how to pose the subject and get the props in quickly and switch the pose faster I would hope... its one of those things that I think you should talk to your photographer about adding with a second or third shooter...

 

[photo_chick]

I've done a few photo booths. They're fun but crazy hectic when it gets rolling.

Putting the photo booth together isn't hard. You need props, strobes and a backdrop (if you're in a barn the backdrop may not be necessary). And you have to have the printer there if you're printing on site. The difficult part is being able to take the shot quickly and accurately when people come through. You can't check the LCD screen every frame, there's no time, so you have to know your setup and know what you're doing to pull it off well.

edited to add... I don't have any shots from the photo booths I've done handy but this one is from a paparazzi wall which was a similar setup. I used two continuous lights (in soft boxes but other methods will work) instead of strobes here because we wanted anyone to be able to walk up with a cell phone, p&s, or whatever to take a shot of their group. The idea was to get people to post the shots immediately on social media to create buzz about the event. The lights were high on each side and aimed down to try and avoid glare on people's glasses. We had the backdrop printed for our show and it's on a 12' backdrop stand (but could be adhered to a wall). It was a very simple but daily effective setup for this and not far off from what you could use for a photo booth look.

 

[MAJPLO]

And don't forget the ink and paper. At my cousin's wedding her photographer had a similar set up. By the time we were taking pictures and waiting around to get the prints, we were told, "there's a problem with the printer. Give us your email address and we will email it to you." Do you think we ever saw the pictures? Nononono. Saddest part was they were a lot of family shots having fun. so.... Make sure you find out exactly how the photographer will be sure to be prepared (should be their JOB to be prepared without client asking) and what s/he will do if something goes wrong.