Sophie At Home: Photo Booth: A Tutorial (with free printable!)

When the local YAC was asked to run a photo booth at the recent Grandparents Day and no one else was willing to take on the job, I jumped at the challenge. After all, that is exactly something I would do, especially when it involves a whole heap of fun! I have always loved looking at other peoples photo booths and thought putting together our own would be great, which of course it was!

Step 1. Gather the things you will need. This is one of the most important steps in running a great photo booth. A suggested list of items include - tripod, camera, SnapLab (optional), multiple SD cards, backdrop, enevelopes, and of course... props!

Props will help make the photo booth experience a lot more fun... so make sure you have lots! We had stuff like funny hats, umbrellas, flowers, scarves, wigs, empty photo frames, chalkboard signs, heart shapes and the props that make a photo booth awesome... moustaches, glasses and bowties on sticks!

We put together our props on sticks easily, by cutting out the shapes from cardboard and colouring them in with a permanent marker and then hot gluing them onto your average skewer. As simple as that, but so very fun! Psst... I've made a freebie of the moustache, glasses and bowtie for you at the end of this post!

Step 2. Set up (early). Be sure to set up your photo booth area early so that you won't have to rush and you might even have time to snap some pics of yourself! We threw a backdrop over a portable whiteboard to create the background and set up the camera on the tripod at the right height so we didn't have to worry about continually adjusting it. We also set out the props so everyone could see the great collection they had to choose from. We were lucky enough to have the local CRC donate their SnapLab so we could print the photos then and there, so we set that up too.

Step 3. Start snapping. The photos were very easy to take because the tripod was set up with the camera and all it simply required was clicking a button. The hardest part was convincing people to be in the photos. When they got the hang of it though, it was hard to get them to leave!

Step 4. Print the pics. As I mentioned before, we were lucky enough to be able to use the Sony SnapLab from the local CRC. Of course, we were very lucky! If you don't have access to an instant SnapLab you could take a laptop and wireless printer or maybe even print the pictures later and send them out. It is highly recommended to have more than on SD card. That way, you can be printing and taking pics at the same time and of course, not be worried about running out of space if you can't download the pics at the time. We ended up using 10 GB of space on the cards.

All in all, it was such a fun day! Because it was a fundraiser for the YAC, we earnt some money by selling the prints too, which made the day even better! And to think all we had to do was press buttons and pose ourselves!

I haven't forgotten about the free printable moustaches, bowties and glasses so that you can make your own props for your own photo booth! Click on the below image to go to the Google Doc, where you can download the printable from. The images (from the Google Doc) are real size when printed A4.