Photo booth

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Photo booth in a public building

A photo booth is a vending machine or modern kiosk that contains an automated, usually coin-operated, camera and film processor. Today the vast majority of photo booths are digital. Traditionally photo booths contain a seat or bench designed to seat the one or two patrons being photographed. Once the payment is made, the photo booth will take a series of photographs (though most modern booths may only take a single photograph and print out a series of identical pictures). Before each photograph, there will be an indication, such as a light or a buzzer, that will signal the patron to prepare their pose. After the last photograph in the series (typically between 3 and 8) has been taken, the photo booth begins developing the film, which whilst it used to take several minutes in the old 'wet chemistry' booths, now with digital technology will take typically about 30 seconds and then deliver the strip of prints.

Typical dimensions of these prints vary. The classic and most familiar arrangement from the old style photo booths is 4 pictures on a strip about 40 mm wide by 205 mm long; digital prints tend to have a square arrangement of two images above two images.

Fotofix electronic booth in Germany.

Both black and white and colour photo booths are common in the US, however in Europe the colour photo booth has almost entirely replaced the B & W . Indeed digital booths now offer the customer the option of whether to print in colour or B & W. Most modern photo booths use video or digital cameras instead of film cameras, and are under computer control. Some variants produce stickers, postcards, or other items with the photographs on them, rather than simply a strip of pictures. These often include an option of novelty borders around the photos.

There are three countries in the world with major infrastructures of photo booths, these are the UK, Japan, France. Many other countries have mature photo booth markets but with a lower level of penetration. These would include Germany, Italy, Spain, Benelux and

Snap Digital Imaging booth in Bicester.

Scandinavia. Other countries are starting to build photo booth markets such as Australia. In Europe and Japan, photo booths are mainly to be found in places of high footfall such as railway stations, shopping centres and supermarkets as their main use is for passports, driving licences, and other forms of identification. In the United States, photo booths are purely used for entertainment and as a result the US is a very small market for photo booth operators when compared to Europe and the Far East. Indeed there are three or four times as many photo booths in the UK alone than there are in the whole of America where they are typically installed indoors in places for entertainment, such as arcades and amusement parks. In some US cities photo booths may also be found in train stations and other transportation hubs, as a means of obtaining a photograph needed for inclusion in a transit pass.

Origins

The patent for the first automated photography machine was filed in 1889 by Mathew Stiffens and during the same year Monsieur Enjalbert demonstrated a similar machine in Exposition Universelle in Paris, France, though these machines were not reliable enough to be self-sufficient.

The modern concept of photo booth with a curtain, screen or other material covering the background and entrance originated with Anatol Josepho in 1925 with the first photo booth appearing on Broadway in New York City. The world's largest photo booth operator and manufacturer is the UK based Photo-Me International, based in Bookham, Surrey, who operate world wide. Their main UK competitor is Consolidated Vending (under the brand name Snap Digital Imaging) with some 500 photo booths in the UK.

Photo sticker booths

Photo sticker booths or photo sticker machines are a special type of photo booth that produce photo stickers. Still maintaining huge popularity where they were created in Japan they have spread throughout Australia and East Asia to Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, China and Thailand. Some have also begun appearing in the United States and Canada although they failed to make any impression in Europe when introduced in the mid 1990s.

Operation

After money has been inserted in the machine(usually 400yen = $4), as many as ten customers can enter the booth and pose for up to ten exposures. Some common options include the ability to alter lighting and back drops while the newest versions offer features such as fans and bluescreen effects. Some establishments even offer costumes and wigs for customers to borrow.

Once the pictures have been taken, the customers select the pictures that they wish to keep and customize them using a touch screen or pen-sensitive screen. The touch screen then displays a vast array of options such as virtual stamps, pictures, clip art, colourful backdrops, borders, and pens that can be superimposed on the photographs. Features that can be found in some sticker machines are customizing the beauty of the customers such as brightening the pictures, making the eyes sparkle more, changing the hair, bringing a more reddish color on the lips, and fixing any blemishes by having it blurred. Other features includes cutting original background and replacing it with a different background and certain backgrounds may be chosen so when the machine prints out the picture, the final sticker picture will come out shiny with sparkles.

Finally, the number and size of the pictures to be printed are chosen, and the pictures print out on a glossy full-color 10 X 15 cm sheet to be cut up and divided among the group of customers. Some photo booths also allow the pictures to be sent to customers' mobile phones. Other photo places have a scanner and laptop at the cashiers desk for customers to scan and copy their original picture before they cut and divide the pictures amongst their group.

Photo sticker booths are particularly popular among young people as an inexpensive form of recreation. The pictures can be kept as souvenirs or traded with friends.

Purikura

In Japanese popular culture, Purikura (プリクラ, Purikura^?) is either a photo sticker booth or the product of such a photo booth. The name is a shortened form of the a registered trademark purinto kurabu (プリント倶楽部, Purinto Kurabu^?). The term derives from the English print club. Jointly developed by Atlus and Sega, the first purikura were sold in July 1995.

Gallery of Images

Castle Court Shopping Centre, N Ireland, 2003

A purikura photo booth in Fukushima City, Japan

A Photo Sticker Shop in Seoul, South Korea

Older 'wet chemistry' booth in UK, circa 2001.

External links

• Photobooth.net
• photobooths in UK Post Office

Further reading

• Miller, Laura. "Graffiti photos: Expressive art in Japanese girls' culture." Harvard Asia Quarterly, Vol. 7 no. 3, pp. 31-42, 2003. (Also at asiaquarterly.com.)
• Chalfen, Richard and Mai Murui. "Print Club Photography in Japan: Framing Social Relationships". Photographs, Objects, Histories ,Chapter 11. Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart (eds.). London: Routledge. Pp. 166-185. 2004.