It’s kind of crazy to think how long I’ve been doing photo booths.

 

It’s kind of crazy to think how long I’ve been doing photo booths.

The very first photo booth we ever rented out was December 9th, 2011.

And honestly… it didn’t go very well.

At the time, there weren’t nearly as many portable booths around, so I decided to build one myself. I had taken measurements from a photo booth at the mall and designed an enclosed booth that could break down into pieces so I could transport it in my truck and set it up without any tools.

Before renting it out, we tested it a couple of times at The Ranch House. Everything seemed to work fine. Maybe a little lag here and there, but overall it worked and we felt ready.

Then came the first rental.

It was for a Christmas party in Fort Worth. I got everything set up, ran a test strip, and it worked perfectly. So I thought we were good to go.

The first guest stepped into the booth, took their pictures… and it would not print to save my life.

So I restarted the system.
Tested it again.
Worked perfectly.

The next person got in the booth… same problem.

The only way I could get it to work that night was rebooting the computer after almost every photo session. Needless to say, it wasn’t exactly the smooth experience I had hoped for.

In the end, I refunded the client their money and went back to the drawing board. The biggest change I made was upgrading to a better laptop for the booth.

After that, things started working the way they were supposed to.

That original enclosed booth ended up renting many times and actually paid for itself within the first couple of months.

Before long, I built a second enclosed photo booth.

Then I started working on a third booth that was originally supposed to be installed at a venue. After I had already bought the materials, they called and asked me to hold off.

Since I already had everything, I just built it anyway.

That booth wasn’t even completely finished when one day I had five photo booths rented out on the same day… and I was also DJing a wedding that night.

Two of the booths were at Double D Ranch, and Stacie was able to handle both of those events for me.

Meanwhile, I started the morning with a hospital event in Grand Prairie, then drove to Sulphur Springs to set up a photo booth for their prom. After that, I ran home to grab the third booth and went to Cross Creek Ranch in Parker to set that one up.

That third booth ended up becoming our first open-air photo booth.

At the time, I’ll be honest… I thought open booths were a little cheesy compared to the traditional enclosed booth.

But when I watched the guests—especially the bridesmaids—jumping in for big group photos and having an absolute blast, I realized something.

I was wrong.

From that moment on, we started offering open photo booths, and over time they actually became the most popular option in our business.

Today we still offer the original enclosed booth experience, but most of our events use our open photo booths.

People ask me sometimes if we’re going to add 360 booths, and maybe someday we will.

But for now, we’re still focused on the classic photo booth experience that has worked so well for us.

It’s just hard to believe that after that first rocky rental back in 2011, here we are almost 15 years later and still going strong.

And it all started with a homemade booth, a reboot button, and a Christmas party that probably wondered what they had gotten themselves into.

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