A few weeks ago, Brian and I were contacted by Bethany Or, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio correspondent who was working on a photobooth story. The story was to center on the Grostern family of Montreal who own and operate Auto-photo Canada, the photobooth powerhouse in the Great White North. Brian and I spent some time on the phone answering her questions, chit chatting about photobooths, and talking about our website. Following a great conversation (Bethany has the photobooth bug, as well) we were disappointed to learn that Brian’s quotes were cut from the final piece. Too bad, as he was the more coherent of the two of us that morning. Despite the editorial oversight, I think the story ended up sounding great. The final piece aired at 6:40am on August 18, 2005, and can be heard right here.
In speaking about Photobooth.net, Bethany makes mention of the photobooth locator that can be used to find photobooths in the USA. Well, I am proud to announce the locator has gone global. We now have a few booths listed from other countries (thanks to Brian’s travels), but we’re still waiting for our first entry from Canada. We can now support submissions from anywhere in the world, so c’mon, send us those booths.
This sunny spring morning brings with it the full, official, public debut of Photobooth.net. Since this site has at its core an interest in collecting and documenting the history of the hard-to-find photobooth and its often ephemeral by-products, it seems like a good idea to take stock of the history of the site itself, before we lose sight of where we came from in the flurry of contributions and accolades. Let us know when that’s supposed to start, will you?
I started my photobooth project in the fall of 2003. By the spring of 2005, when I folded it into this collaboration, I had 31 films, 8 television shows, 4 commercials, and one music video featuring photobooths listed.
In my Photo Booth Directory, I had 50 photobooth locations listed, seven of which were submitted by five different contributors. The booths were located in 14 states and one foreign country. I had personally visited the other 43, in ten states and one foreign country.
On May 1, 2005, Photobooth.net was the 26th result in a Google search for the term “photobooth”; the result was for the 7th International Photobooth Convention page. Interestingly enough, the ninth result in that same search was for my Doubleperf.com Photo Booth Directory page, and the tenth result was for Tim’s photoboothstl.com, so we were both already well-represented.
I also spelled “photobooth” as “photo booth.” Tim and I, ever the trendsetters with hopes of creating our own brave new linguistic world, have agreed to spell it as one compound word. This is important stuff, really.
After much head-scratching, square-one-returning, re-coding, and a round of interstate online video, IM, and telephonic collaboration, the Photobooth Blog and by extension Photobooth.net are now rendering properly to our Internet Explorer visitors. Though it is outdated, non-standard, unsafe, and inadequate, its users certainly aren’t, and we welcome you. Thanks to Tim for help on this project; this collaboration continues to be mutually beneficial.
The Photobooth.net Photobooth Blog is officially launched today. The goal of the blog is to bring to light examples of photobooths in the news, on television, and in film, as well as to highlight art projects and other works on the internet and around the world that employ photobooths. Finally, the blog will be a forum for announcements about Photobooth.net itself, including new features, interesting developments, and other milestones. It will be administered by Tim and Brians, with other contributors added down the line. Welcome!
