How to run a photo booth at a festival
A festival's photo booth is not a camera on a stand. It is a code on a standee, a frame people want to be seen in, and a crowd that needs nothing explained. Here is how to run one.
Weeks before
Decide what the booth is for. If it is for photos shared, ask guests for nothing and let them go straight to the camera. If you want devotees' details for next year, ask for them - before the photo or after it - and choose only the fields you will use.
Write down the date you will delete those details. It is printed on the form beside the consent box, and the guest list cannot be downloaded after it. A month after the festival is plenty for a thank-you message.
Make the event in the console, then open its private preview link on your own phone. It shows the booth exactly as guests will see it, and nothing you do there is counted as a real guest.
The frames
Make one portrait frame and one landscape at least: families stand close together, groups spread out. Guests choose the shape first, then the frame.
Put the festival's name and the year on the frame, and your mandal's or temple's name. That is what everyone who sees the photo on WhatsApp will read. There is more on this in what makes a good frame.
Words for each day
Write the caption guests start with, with your festival's hashtag in it. They can change it before they share, unless you turn that off.
A festival runs for days, and the words change: the first day's welcome, then visarjan's goodbye. Give each caption option the days it shows on, in up to three groups, and guests pick the one that fits.
Where the code goes
Your organisation has one printed code. Print it big and put it at eye level where people already stop: the entrance, the queue for darshan, the prasad counter, the selfie point. Put it in several places - every copy is the same code.
The code never names this year's festival. It opens whichever of your events is active, so the standee you print this year opens next year's festival too, without a reprint.
Under the code, say what it does in a few words: scan, take your photo, share it. Nobody needs more.
The day itself
Every guest uses their own phone, so there is no queue at one camera and nothing to guard. A family can take turns on one phone; each photo is its own.
The booth loads once. If the network at a crowded pandal drops, photos are still made on the phone, and the details guests typed wait there and are sent when it returns.
Keep the console's Today screen open on your phone. It shows the day's counts and whether the printed code opens this event. If you need to stop the booth - a ceremony, a crush at the gate - pause it there with a message of your own, and resume it when you are ready.
Afterwards
Analytics shows how many people opened the booth, made a photo and shared it, which frames were picked and which were shared, which caption won, and the busiest hours - counts, never people.
Download the guest list as a spreadsheet, or the whole event pack: frames, the printed code, the guest list with each guest's consent, and the numbers. Then the details are deleted on the date you promised.
Keep the standee. Next year, make the new festival in the console, point the code at it, and put the same standee back up.