Tim Mantoani Photography

When I started looking at photobooths for our wedding, I was definitely put off by the price.  Most of the links that I found online were well over a thousand.  Since I was on a budget, this definitely seemed like a bit much.  We never ended up having a photobooth, but since then I’ve come up with a great way to do a DIY photobooth.  This works equally well for a wedding reception or your next house party.

Here are the key things that you need:

1. empty corner and a blank wall
2. some sort of room divider or way to rope off the area, even a long skinny table would work
3. camera
4. remote to the camera
5. tripod

Most people don’t have the last three things handy, but it’s pretty easy to rent these items.

• Tripod ( 7 day rental is $54) (if you rent this from somewhere else, make sure you get both the tripod legs and a ballhead)
• Canon Digital Rebel XT (7 day rental is $52)
• Canon XT Remote (purchase $21.80)

Grand total:  $127.80

All your guests have to do is get in front of the camera and push the button on the small wireless remote (or have someone off camera do it) and there you have it!  A photobooth on the cheap!

To pimp out your photobooth, consider adding in some fun elements, like this:

 OfftheWallExpression

Leave some chalk near your photobooth and people can write fun messages on the wall behind them. You can also include accessories like hats, feather boas, animal ears, or anything else that strikes your fancy.

If you want to up the fun factor for your photobooth, you can also include some charades cards to give people ideas for what to do in front of the camera.  They can be fun to make on your own–some ideas for  charades cards are here and here.

After the night is over, you can upload all the pics to Facebook, or a photo sharing site like Flickr or Picasa and then share with your guests.