Over the last few years we’ve been incredibly fortunate to be involved in making the magic for a number of events around Adelaide. This has turned out to be one of our favourite things to do! If you are creating a special event and could use an element of photo science/magic we would love to be involved! Here are some of the projects we’ve contributed to so far:
Bowerbird Bazaar, November 2016
We were invited by Jane Bowden, the creative force behind Bowerbird, to bring some unusual activities for visitors to the event to experience. After some great discussions about the kids of activities she felt would suite Bowerbird we settled on a Tintype Photobooth for the Friday evening, and Cyanotype workshops for Saturday and Sunday for both kids and adults. We weren’t going to have access to a room to use for a darkroom – this was the excuse we were waiting for to build a portable tintype darkbox.
Setting up for cyanotype also required some ingenuity – but we were proud of how pretty and functional we made the space. The photos look a bit lonely… We were too busy teaching during the workshops (of which there was one every hour!) to take photos. Oops!
Night Lab, South Australian Museum, 2015
Absolutely The Best Thing Ever – we had the immense pleasure of running a tintype photobooth as part of NightLab at the South Australian Museum This was without a doubt our best ever photbooth experience – lots of geek talk about optics and light wavelengths and excitable photonerdery. It was also the very first time we’ve set up an impromptu wet-plate darkroom in a conference room! We didn’t manage to get digital copies of all of the 13 plates we made in the 3 hour marathon, but here is a little sample. Please forgive the quality of some of these photos, tintypes are hard to photograph and we took these in a hurry as we wanted people to be able to take their treasures home with them!
The Cocktail Exchange, 2014
“Come for the cocktails, and stay for the art.” The Cocktail Exchange was an Adelaide Fringe venue/experience. Several of Adelaide’s finest small bars had teamed up to create themed cocktail events over 3 Friday evenings. The themes were based on the Prohibition, Golden Era and 80s+90s Revival Eras. We were invited to provide interactive photobooth style activities for the Prohibition and 80s+90s Revival events.
Although Tintypes were pretty much outmoded during Prohibition the Cocktail Exchange event organisers were really jazzed about the process, so we held our very first Tintype Photobooth. We freely admit to being noobs to the process at this point in time – but nobody seemed to mind. Besides – nobody was good at sitting still after a divine imbibe or two.
For the 80s+90s Revival event we set up a neon Polaroid Peel-apart photobooth (which we also admit is much more 70s revival than 90s) Oh Polaroid peel-apart film, how we miss you! The polaroids for this event all went home with their owners. Thanks for playing!
Moving Music 2014
Over a cider at the Exeter our new friend the enigmatic events maestro Sam Wright explained his vision for Moving Music 2014. It involved animal masks, swapping secrets with strangers and lots and lots of Polaroids. This was the first time we’d been trusted to pull some magic out of a sack when the clock struck an appointed hour. We loved it, and so did everyone else ♥ (even if we do say so ourselves). But the real credit must go to the genius of Sam. This video describes the entire event better than we can:
In summary Moving Music was a music festival in which the audience had to travel by foot across the city to various locations – each musical performance was at a new site and the audience was led on a tour of the city by the festival organisers – a bit of a musical treasure hunt. We were to be at the initial meeting spot, greeting everyone, and taking an instant photo of them. We then gave that photo to a complete stranger in the audience and asked them to write a piece of advice on the image. We collected all the photos and then…
… at stop number three of the Festival lineup was the incredible Wintercoats. We were to present the photos back to the festivalgoers at this venue, and were responsible for making it pretty, fun and festive.
