April 24, 2017

Meet Brian Davis of Lucky Photo Booth in Los Feliz

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Davis.

Brian, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was raised in a tract home near the beach in South Orange County. I got my first camera when I was ten years old and started to take photography seriously as a teenager. After High School, I traveled throughout Mexico, Central America and Kauai, surfing and photographing my friends surfing. At this point I decided to make photography my profession.

After completing my studies at Art Center College of Design, I moved to New York City and started my career as a freelance commercial photographer. My clients included record companies, design firms and magazines.

I moved back to Los Angeles and continued shooting out of a loft in Downtown. One fateful night, I went to a punk rock club in my neighborhood called All’s Bar and met a wonderful woman who agreed to marry me. We moved to a house in Los Feliz where we raised our two daughters and continue to live happily ever after.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Being a photographer is the best job but it’s not necessarily the best business. When the great recession hit in 2009, many of my clients went out of business or lost their jobs. It became obvious to me that I was going to have to find a way to expand my photography business if I wanted to survive. I felt that I had three options: 1) Get a real job, 2) Come up with a new business entity, 3) Take an existing idea and make it better.

Around this time, my teen daughter had me driving her to and from endless Bar and Bat Mitzvah events. I noticed how popular photo booths were. Every party had a photo booth. I also noticed that the photo booths weren’t very well made and put out photo strips that were not very high quality. This was fine for a thirteen-year-old party. I did online research and found a lot of companies that rented photo booths but none that had quality photo booths that would appeal to an older, more sophisticated clientele.

At this point, I decided that I would take the existing idea of a photo booth and design and build the best booth I could. Nobody was building photo booths that were appropriate for upscale weddings, corporate events, and parties.

I spent the next two years in my garage, researching, designing and building what I believed was the ultimate rental photo booth. There were a lot of design challenges. The photo booth had to travel. Therefore, it had to be robust yet light enough for two people to lift and move. The booth had to collapse and break down in order to fit into a cargo van. The booth had to assemble and disassemble in a short period of time. The booth had to have a lighting scheme that was versatile as far as flattering faces of all shapes, sizes and colors. High quality studio strobe lighting was essential. The booth had to put out big beautiful photo strips. People had to look their best. The photo booth had to look beautiful inside and out.

After building a prototype and several redesigns and rebuilds the first Lucky Photo Booth was ready for business in August of 2011. Its maiden event was a charity fundraiser and the booth ran better than expected. A friend of mine suggested that I list the booth on this new website called Groupon. Maybe it would open up some new leads.

A week later the Groupon listing ran. The response was unbelievable. We turned down no one and found ourselves booked for about seventy events in the months ahead. By committing to so many events, I was forced to work out all of the bugs and streamline all aspects of the business in a relatively short period of time.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Lucky Photo Booth – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Lucky Photo Booth rents custom made upscale Art Deco style photo booths for corporate events, weddings and parties. We serve all of Southern California.

We work with event planners and individuals to create a fun experience that their guests will walk away from with high quality photos of themselves.

As the founder/owner I’m responsible for all aspects of the business. I have a team of associates who help set up and run the booth during events. We have two identical Art Deco booths. The Art Deco style is versatile. The booth looks great in night clubs, vineyards, resorts, hotels, restaurants and country clubs.

When I designed the booth, my goal was to come up with something that a professional man in a tuxedo or a woman in an elegant evening gown would feel comfortable getting into.

What sets Lucky Photo Booth apart from other photo booths is the high-quality materials, elements, and photographic components. The seat is custom made for a 1929 Ford Roadster. The deep red velvet curtains are handmade. Details like a winged goddess hood ornament and Cadillac tail lights, LED accent lighting and fine wood siding give the booth it’s unique look, style and soul.

From my point of view the most important thing is the photographic lighting. The very first prototype booth that I built started with the positioning and balance of the studio quality strobe lighting. Once the relationship of the seat, camera and light modifiers were worked out, I designed the rest of the booth around that.

The great thing about the photo booth business for me is that most events take place on the weekends and at night which doesn’t conflict with my assignment photography.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
There really is no perfect place to live. Los Angeles comes pretty close though.

I shoot a lot with natural light. We have plenty of that. For a photographer, this city presents endless inspiration. For cultural diversity, there is no greater melting pot.

One thing I’ve discovered since I started this business is how rich this city is with Art Deco style buildings and architecture. The photo booth has been fortunate to be part of events at Union Station, The Oviatt Penthouse, Vibiana, The Queen Mary, Castle Green, The Wiltern Theatre, The Sunset Towers, The Los Angeles Athletic Club and The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel as well as other landmark venues.

I’m a Griffith Park local. My dog Luke and I are up on the trails as often as possible.

El Porto is my go to Boogie Board spot. The waves are decent, the beach has ample parking and with Metro ExpressLanes FasTrak the drive isn’t too bad. I have a group of friends who can be found there every Sunday.

Our preferred post photo booth event late night snack stop is Leo’s taco truck in the car wash parking lot on the corner of Glendale Blvd and Temple. They serve up a sublime al pastor taco with fresh pineapple that is worth waiting in line for.

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