FotoBomb lets guests
choose superimposed
backgrounds, provides
social media options and
includes a memory book
of photos.
Ready For
Your Close Up
Photo booths and green screens: What you need to know.
P
Jason Miller
Jews in the
Digital Age
hoto booths are not new, but the technology has improved
immensely. Just recently, I was looking at the three-ring
binder of printed Polaroid photos from my bar mitzvah. It
wasn’t the photo booth of the 21st century, but my parents had a
couple of older teens ( family friends) take Polaroids of our guests
and paste them on colorful pages so the guests could leave their
mazel tov wishes next to the photos. Companies were also avail-
able during the middle to late 1980s to print Polaroids and place
them in Lucite standing frames for the guests to take home as
souvenirs of the event.
Fast forward to today and there are countless companies avail-
able with the ability to quickly print high-resolution photos of
your guests with a number of gimmicks. These photo booths have
become increasingly popular at not only bar and bat mitzvahs,
but also at weddings, birthday parties and corporate events. Now
guests can control their own backgrounds in green-screen photo
booths simply by tapping among pre-chosen images on a touch
screen. They can dress up in costumes, record a video greeting,
grab props and have unlimited photos printed, with their party
logo, instantly.
As guests have come to expect instant sharing on their social
networks, new technologies in photo booths have been pushed
out. The latest feature photo booth companies like Masserman
Photography in Keego Harbor, which is rolling out a slow-motion
photo booth implementing video clips set to music.
Star Trax Entertainment, based in Ferndale, now offers custom-
ized Snapchat Geo-Filters. This means that when guests are at the
venue, they can choose the official Snapchat filter for that event.
Star Trax is also offering Mirror Me, which lets guest look directly
into a mirror to pose for their photo.
Many photo booth options have a GIF component, which allows
the guest to create a very short animation sound. Photographer
Jay Dreifus is offering this now and it’s called GIFy. Many photo
booth vendors offer green screen technology, which allows your
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celebrate! • 2017
jn