WHITNEY CHAMBERLIN
Workshop: I have a camera..now what?
Smilebooth inventor, Our Labor of Love director, Field Trip, The Flashdance, all-scale event producer.
"I've always been fascinated by widespread adrenaline rush. Starting when I was 16, I poured that stimulus into producing raves and festivals. In the early '90s, I worked as a tour manager for rock bands. At age 20, I started transitioning into the club-oriented nightlife scene with Tasty Shows, a Seattle affiliate of Neverstop. When I was 21, I joined the Neverstop team as one of their Cultural Engineers. We took the experiential stimulus and applied it to marketing, revolutionizing the standard model. At the same time, United States of Consciousness provided my outlet to the younger crowd. I became a company partner and helped turn a modest business into a phenomenon. We took the buzz and excitement of big acts like Black Eyed Peas and Daft Punk and coupled them with the wonderment of an experiential atmosphere (one event featured indoor motorcycle tracks), drawing crowds of ten to fifteen thousand.
Throughout all of this, I did my own documentary work. Which came in handy years later when my wife, Jesse, convinced me to do wedding photography with her. In the years that followed, Our Labor of Love rose to the forefront of the industry as one of the top ten wedding photography studios in the world. But as a wedding photographer, I became acutely aware that guests wanted to be involved in the creative process. This is how Smilebooth was born, a user-operated photo booth that is intuitive, empowering, and connective.
Over four hundred weddings later, as well as multiple incarnations and innovations of Smilebooth, I feel that the time has come for me to pass this particular torch along and start sharing what I've learned. I am currently in that process of transitioning back into doing more as an event producer, but I still have a hand in both Our Labor of Love and Smilebooth (Smilebooth is a particularly clingy robot who gives me guilt trips about abandoning it)."
For more information, please visit: http://smilebooth.com/