A vintage 4×5 camera, a portable darkroom we bring with us, and a finished print in your hands about five minutes later. There's nothing to email you afterward, because there's no file. Catch us at First Fridays, find us at markets around the Valley, or hire the booth for your own event.
Find the booth set up at our Grand Avenue studio on First Fridays. Sit down, watch your portrait develop in real time, and walk away with the original.
See the next date →We bring the booth to markets and events around the Valley. Keep an eye on where we'll be set up next and grab a one-of-a-kind portrait on the spot.
Where we'll be →Weddings, private parties, brand activations, festivals. Commission the booth in color or black & white as a live, hands-on keepsake for your guests.
Send an inquiry →We're on Grand Avenue for First Fridays and out at markets and pop-ups in between. Here's where we're set up next.
Dates can shift. Confirm on our events page or Instagram before you head out.
Darkroom printing is slow work and instant pictures are fast, so the two don't usually go together. We built the booth to do both. The camera is a 1940s Graflex with a sheet of photographic paper in the back, and the darkroom is a light-tight box we set up wherever the booth lands.
No sensor, no memory card, no printer. Nothing gets uploaded and there's no file to send you later. You leave with the print.
Instant film carries its own sealed chemistry and develops itself in your hand. Ours is real darkroom paper, developed by hand in trays, the same way any darkroom print is made.
There's no negative, so there's no second copy. Every sitting makes exactly one.
Every portrait is captured the same way: one 4×5 sheet, our vintage Graflex, the same strobes at the same settings. What changes is the paper and the chemistry it’s developed in. That’s where black & white and color part ways.
Harman Direct Positive Paper, developed by hand in standard black-and-white chemistry. High-contrast, archival, unmistakably analog.
Our newest offering: the same exposure on Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper, run through a reversal process for a true chromogenic color positive. One step, the re-exposure, happens under light.
Capture is identical for both papers: same camera, same lights, same exposure. Only the development changes. Here’s the black-and-white run; the color booth follows the same path in reversal chemistry, with part of the process done under light.
The heart of the booth is the paper itself. Manufactured by Harman Technology, this direct-positive stock yields a positive image straight out of the developer. No negative in between. We shoot the 4×5 sheets because they fit our camera's film holders perfectly.
You'll stand on the far side of our vintage Graflex Speed Graphic 4×5. We position you so nothing gets clipped, then dial in focus. And distance is everything. The depth of field is razor-thin, so a few inches forward or back is the difference between tack-sharp and dreamy soft.
The make-or-break moment. Positive media leaves almost no margin for error, so before every session we calibrate strobe power, distance, and aperture. We shoot at about 1/10 second, strobes at fill, usually f/8. Three strobes throw a combined 1,920 watt-seconds. Blinding the first time, and gone in a flash.
Stacy built a portable darkroom box that develops each portrait one at a time, rigged with an infrared camera and monitor so you can watch it happen inside. Developer brings the image up, an acetic-acid stop bath halts it, then fixer clears the unexposed silver and hardens the image so it's safe to bring back into the light for a rinse.
Fresh out of the chemistry, the print is dripping wet. We press it between two absorbent cloths to pull most of the moisture out, then tuck it into an envelope where it finishes drying as you carry it home. From shutter click to print in hand is about five minutes.
We designed this booth ourselves and we run it together. Stacy works the chemistry inside the portable darkroom she built, rigged with an infrared camera and monitor so you can watch your print come up. Daniel works the camera, the lights, and the exposure. Five minutes from shutter click to a dry print in an envelope only happens because we've done it enough times to hand off without talking. One of us is loading the next sheet while the other is pulling a print out of the fix.
Tell us a little about your event and we'll send availability and pricing. The booth works for weddings, private parties, corporate and brand activations, festivals, and markets, indoors or out, in color or black & white.