Four Strips, Two Hours and a Proprietary Prop: Raising a Glass to the Late, Great Photo Booth

I first shared a bill with a photo booth at a wedding in Solihull in 2011. I was doing close-up magic between courses; it was doing that thing where it flashed, whirred and dispensed a strip of four images of a man in a fake moustache holding a pint. We got on fine. We had a professional respect. It took the lulls, I took the tables, and between us we kept four hundred guests from looking at each other.

That booth is gone now. Not that specific one — although given the state of the van it arrived in, possibly — but the whole breed. The photo booth, once the must-have wedding add-on of the late Noughties and early 2010s, is quietly shuffling off. This is my eulogy. Bring tissues and a wigs basket.

Cause of Death: Everyone Has a Camera in Their Pocket

We don't need to hold an inquest. The culprit is the smartphone, and the murder weapon was the front-facing camera.

When I started out, a photo booth was exotic. It was the only way to get a picture of yourself pulling a daft face at your nan, and frankly the daft-face market was underserved. Then Instagram arrived, filters made everyone look like a particularly golden retriever, and suddenly the booth's entire proposition — a box that takes silly photos of drunk people — could be replicated by anyone with a phone and low self-esteem.

You can't compete with free. I know this because I've tried charging people to watch me make a coin disappear while their nephew shouts "it's up your sleeve".

What the Booth Took With It

It's worth noting what we lost, because it wasn't nothing.

The booth was a pressure valve. When the DJ dropped a ballad at the wrong moment and the dancefloor emptied like a Wetherspoons at 3pm, the booth soaked up the awkward. It gave the shy ones something to do. It gave the aunties a base camp. It gave me, a magician, somewhere to hide when the best man asked if I could "do something rude".

It also produced physical artefacts. Actual strips of paper that ended up on fridges, in wallets, sellotaped inside kitchen cupboards. In fifteen years of performing I've been shown dozens of those strips by couples who kept them. Nobody has ever shown me a photo from a shared iCloud album. The booth's true product wasn't pictures. It was proof that a night happened.

What the Couples Are Hiring Instead

Now for the practical bit, because I know half the people reading this are organising something with a spreadsheet open in another tab.

The booth hasn't died so much as evolved, Darwin-style, into stranger and more flamboyant forms. The current roster, as I see it from the dancefloor:

• The 360-degree video booth. Guests stand on a plinth while a camera orbits them like an anxious seagull. Enormous fun, genuinely popular, and responsible for more than one sprained ankle at a christening in Wigan.
• The mirror booth. A full-length touchscreen that people treat with a reverence they've never shown an actual mirror.
• The audio guestbook. A vintage-style telephone where guests leave voice messages for the couple. This one I fully endorse; it's essentially a phone-a-magician service where I don't have to do anything.
• Nothing at all, replaced by a roaming content creator. A person with a gimbal and a ring light, filming TikToks of your first dance. I have complicated feelings. Mostly I stay out of shot and we respect each other.

If you're booking, my advice is this: think about what the booth actually did for your evening — filled the gaps, occupied the shy, made souvenirs — and pick the option that serves that purpose, not the one that looked best on Pinterest. And if you do book a 360 booth, put it somewhere with ceilings higher than a shipping container. Trust me on that one.

Rest Well, Old Friend

I'll miss the booth. We were colleagues, rivals and, occasionally, sharing the same extension lead. It never once tried to get me to do a magic trick at it, which is more than I can say for the DJ.

So here's to the strip of four: overexposed, poorly lit, and always slightly blurry. Like the best of us, really.