You HAVE to do this at your next party!  Set up a photo booth!

I recently attended a birthday party at a restaurant and was asked to set up a photo booth.  I had heard of people doing this, but hadn't ever set one up myself.  It turned out pretty simple.  I was in a dark restaurant so had to use flash.  The morning before the party I scouted the restaurant, and I am sure glad I did.  I was going to have a very small area at the back of the room and there weren't any outlets available there.  Right away this told me that I would be using battery powered flashes. 

The idea is to set up the camera on a tripod, manually set the exposure, manually set the focus on the place where the people are going to be sitting, and then use a cable release or wireless trigger to let people take pictures of themselves.

You can see my setup in the back of the room.

Above is shot in aperture priority and once I dialed in a manual exposure for the light coming from the flashes I could see what the camera was going to see.

I use pocket wizards for this, but just because I have them.  You need two and at that price it makes for an expensive photo booth.  Luckily, our friends at adorama came up with a great option.  Their wireless triggers are much more affordable and work just as well in this situation.

I had everything all set up.  In case you are wondering, my flashes are firing via nikon's wireless creative lighting system.  I asked my wife to step in after everything was all set up.  I had marked the area to stand in with a square of gaff tape.

Everything looked good, so I made an announcement to the party about how it worked and then walked away.  All evening I heard laughing and the flashes were popping almost constantly.  I went over 3 or 4 times to make sure things were still coming out okay, and they were.  By the end of the evening I had several hundred shots.  One more tip.....take along some props.  We took costumes and wigs along and as the evening progressed...things got more and more fun!

All My Best,
Chris Hurtt
Instructor/PPSOP.com

Chris is teaching The Art of Seeing

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