The World’s First High End Photobooth

In 2006 the DSLR was just coming about. At the time my good Joe Miller and I bought one of these $5000 cameras. At the time the price seemed completely ludicrous. No one owned a camera that expensive, definitely not a digital camera. Once we got it we set out trying to understand how these new cameras were going to change photography. We decided the big change was the instant nature of the format. So we created Polite in Public, the world’s first high end photobooth, bringing magazine quality images to your events. The term Experiential Marketing had not yet crossed anyone’s lips, but we new there was something here, because after a short time the idea took really off! We were hired by most major entertainment companies, like Warner Brothers, Paramount, as well as celebrities like Paris Hilton, Hugh Hefner, and even Barak Obama’s presidential campaign. The day the company really turned was when Svedka Vodka asked us if we could do activations in 10 cities around the country simultaneously. Till then we were only able to do 2 or 3 activations at one time, and anything outside of LA required flights. At this point I became the CTO of the company and sat down and designed a stand alone machine that had a high end DSLR, light source, computer, touch screen, and associated printer all in one. This required a lot of engineering and custom circuit boards. The result was the best photobooths I think the world has ever seen…