Photobooth in Ecstacy Part I

Photo booths and Dinosaur Bones

One of the things I love about our relationship is its spontaneity. One spontaneous moment occurred a few weeks ago as Tanya and I were driving back to class after a morning excursion to breakfast with her dance class. As we passed Presidents Circle, Tanya had the brilliant idea of having our pictures taken at the Museum of Natural History. Excited at the distraction, I eagerly agreed. After finding a sweet parking spot and passing a group of excited elementary students and exasperated teachers on fieldtrip, and a slight digression by John on the dynamics of fieldtrips and the worth of playing imaginary 007 with one’s self while on fieldtrip, followed by a roll of the eyes by Tanya, we found our way to the Museum.

The smell of old building hit us as we walked in the doors. I was immediately distracted by the mineral displays and the visual overload that is common to most museums. Tanya gently directed me by the hand past the diversion of the entry towards the back of the museum. Here we discovered a seriously vintage photo booth. It looked like it was straight from the 70’s, foil trim and all. Upon entering the booth we had the option of two backgrounds: curtain or no curtain. I don’t know what people in the 70’s were thinking, but what sort of background option is that? The side of the booth was detailed with a nice gold tropical landscape, why couldn’t they have done the same for the background? Anyway, we opted for the curtain and proceeded with our photo shoot.

Where it takes a second to familiarize yourself with new technology, I discovered it takes several to familiarize yourself with old technology. Upon seating ourselves we were confronted by a coin slot, a button, and a green light. After struggling with the coin slot for a few minutes we finally got all of our quarters in. Not quite sure where to proceed from there we pushed the button. The green light started flashing, and all of the sudden a series of rapid-fire machine gun photos were taken of us. You will find these photos posted to the left of this entry. The first was taken by surprise, hence John’s confused/stalker-like appearance; by the time we got to the second we had a better idea of what was going on. After waiting for a few minutes our pictures were finally developed. We were both surprised that they managed to stock the old film, or that it was even still produced.

Well, that was pretty much the adventure of the photo-booth, Tanya had to drag me out of the Museum, promising me that we could go back to look at the cool dinosaur displays.
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