The traditional photobooth is the subject of a brief piece posted in the new sundayheraldtalk, the Sunday Herald’s “new place to debate issues affecting Scotland, the UK and the world.” In the editorial, titled “Life’s a cycle, but nothing this cool will happen again,” Diane Smyth, deputy editor of the British Journal of Photography, chooses the dip-and-dunk booth over the new digital photobooths because of the element of chance inherent in the analog booths:
OK so digital booths allow you to preview your photographs and edit out the dross. But where’s the fun in that? The frisson of excitement as you waited to see what God-awful photographs would drop into the out-tray has gone, overtaken by the control freakery of our image-obsessed society.
Smyth suggests mourning the death of the traditional booth, but if her readers were to follow her link to our very own Photobooth.net, they would find an oasis of photochemical goodness. We appreciate the link, and would offer that mourning is premature as the death of the traditional booth has so far been forestalled.