If there was one piece of the open studio that caused me the most anxiety, it was the photobooth. From an abstract perspective, what could be better? I am a photographer, I make witty designs...seemed perfect.
However, almost everyone I spoke to thought it was a bad idea. "People won't get it." "No one will want to do it." "I am not sure how it will go down with the crowd of people who attend."
Well, as I said to anyone who would listen, I would rather fail spectacularly than disappoint with mediocrity.
Fortunately, it was a huge hit, not with everyone, but the children who came (and there were a lot of them) loved it.
The Set Up: I used the children's ikea curtains for the back drop, hung up on curtain wire. I used a friend's backdrop frame to hang the photobooth frame from. The frame was cut freehand out of cardboard and painted.I hung my reflector on the side to bounce a bit of light back into the corner
I used my 50mm lens on the 7d to photograph everyone. Ideally I would have used something slightly wider, as the 50mm didn't leave me much room for error across the room. However, the 15-70mm was in use elsewhere. We had originally set it up so that the camera would transmit the photos to the iPad screen, but the demise of the laptop ended that idea.
On the whole, people really loved having a play. Many people did get their photos taken but did not give permission for their use on line. All fine by me, but that does mean that the collage below is heavy on the Harrison-Goldin crew (not least because E wanted his photos taken with EVERYONE!!
(Just a sample of my favourites from the day)
Sadly, there was a major techincal failure, because of the ongoing laptop saga. I lost the best of the photos and was left with some rather poor quality jpeg backups. I have really spent time tweaking my camera settings for my RAW files and all of the jpegs came out looking overcooked.
Hey ho beginners mistake that I will not make again and I am hoping that when my computer is back with me with my proper editing software I can salvage some of them.
All in all, it was a lot of fun and worth doing again!