These days it seems no event is com­plete with­out pho­to booths.

They com­mand al­most as much at­ten­tion as the bride and groom at wed­dings, can match the food lines at grad­u­a­tions, and peo­ple can’t get enough of them at par­ties and fetes. Their in­tent? To en­ter­tain guests, and cre­ate in­stant phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal keep­sakes that most of­ten find their way on so­cial me­dia.

For al­most three years, life and busi­ness part­ners and own­ers of D’el­la Events, Ke­ston De Sormeaux and Kel­ly-Ann Lewis, have worked tire­less­ly be­hind the scenes of their pho­to booths at events, us­ing their var­i­ous built-in fea­tures to cu­rate the best pos­si­ble pho­tos and videos for those in at­ten­dance. The Ari­ma-based busi­ness own­ers of­fer choic­es of open-air, mir­ror and 360 video pho­to booths, au­dio guest book, tra­di­tion­al pho­tog­ra­phy as well as low ly­ing fog ma­chines and cool sparks at any type of event.

“The 360 is still very pop­u­lar,” De Sormeaux told Busi­ness Guardian.

“Even when we start­ed do­ing it, I thought it was more of a fad thing. And it had been around a while be­fore that. I’m not sure how much longer its pop­u­lar­i­ty will last, but it is one of the main things that push­es the busi­ness right now.”

And be­cause there is al­ways a next big thing in any busi­ness ven­ture, he said they pay at­ten­tion to the mar­ket and the trends and fo­cus on qual­i­ty, so when­ev­er things change, they are al­ways ready to piv­ot, es­pe­cial­ly in a mar­ket that is as com­pet­i­tive as theirs.

“The mar­ket may be a bit sat­u­rat­ed, but we try to stand out with the qual­i­ty of our work,” Lewis ex­plained.

“Some peo­ple just look for the cheap­est prices and end up get­ting sub­stan­dard work. What many peo­ple don’t un­der­stand is that there’s a lot of work that goes on be­hind the scenes with pho­to booths that no­body sees. They just think you pull up a pho­to booth, you make a lay­out, you cut some mu­sic and put it on, and it’s noth­ing. But every­thing has a cost be­hind it. For ex­am­ple, be­hind the 360 there are apps that you have to pay for,” such as LumaShare and Lum­a­Booth.

“There’s al­so a lot of work that has to go in­to set­ting up, in prepa­ra­tion be­fore your event,” she ex­plained.

The cou­ple first no­ticed the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the 360 at an event they at­tend­ed. And as al­go­rithms go, it kept pop­ping up on their so­cial me­dia feeds af­ter the event.

“And then we were like, ‘we bet­ter try it.’ When we first did it, we bond­ed with it,” De Sormeaux re­called, and they de­cid­ed to in­vest in a booth.

“A 40-inch 360 right now, through Ama­zon, would cost about $15,000,” in­clud­ing ship­ping and du­ties.

“If you source it through Al­iba­ba, it may be $12,000,” De Sormeaux es­ti­mat­ed.

“The big mir­ror booth through Ama­zon is at least $20,000, in­clud­ing clear­ing. Through Al­iba­ba, $15,000. A reg­u­lar pho­to­booth could cost as low as $5,000.”

Af­ter pur­chas­ing the 360 booth, they re­alised that they would need props and ac­ces­sories such as a high-res­o­lu­tion cam­era that can cost up to $10,000 de­pend­ing on the so­phis­ti­ca­tion, pro­fes­sion­al-grade print­er, user-friend­ly com­put­er or tablet, ef­fec­tive light­ing, and ver­sa­tile back­drops.

“I start­ed off us­ing my phone, but then af­ter­wards I felt that prob­a­bly this phone was not good enough be­cause it was not shoot­ing good in low light. So we had to get light­ing and tripods. We start­ed there and then the hole just kept get­ting deep­er and deep­er, be­cause we need­ed to in­vest more and more to get the busi­ness to where we want­ed it to be.” But the in­vest­ment was worth it. He said as the de­mand for their ser­vices grew, they kept adding dif­fer­ent types of booths and ex­pand­ed their ser­vices. But one thing re­mained con­stant – the qual­i­ty of their cus­tomer ser­vice.

Lewis said, “Re­mem­ber, you sell your busi­ness by the way you in­ter­act with peo­ple and the way you treat clients. Peo­ple like to feel com­fort­able when they come to a pho­to booth; some of them de­pend on you to pose them to get a per­fect pic­ture or per­fect video. It’s about a pas­sion for what you do and mak­ing sure the cus­tomers are sat­is­fied.”

She said when they start­ed the busi­ness, they didn’t know any­thing about pho­to booths. Their go-to for re­search was YouTube videos, which they fol­lowed, care­ful­ly trekking down the tri­al-and-er­ror road. Af­ter every job, they would do an eval­u­a­tion and look at ways in which they could make the next job bet­ter.

“We looked at how we could get a bet­ter, per­fect pic­ture, and worked on it un­til we got there. And then we ac­tu­al­ly did pho­tog­ra­phy class­es as well.”

Lewis said once they got the hang of it, there were more con­tracts, and they are at a point where busi­ness is good. How­ev­er, in re­cent times she has no­ticed a lit­tle dip in the de­mand for pho­to booths at events.

“I don’t know if it’s be­cause of the econ­o­my, but when we com­pared from last year un­till now, we see the dif­fer­ence.”

Nev­er­the­less, she said, fluc­tu­a­tions are all part of any busi­ness land­scape, and as the in­dus­try evolves, D’el­la Events will con­tin­ue to work on ways to di­ver­si­fy its ser­vices and main­tain its qual­i­ty in cre­at­ing mem­o­ries of a life­time.