MDRN Photobooth Company is a super-successful event photography group based in Ottawa, Canada. Using DNP printers they provide not only memories for events for attendees, but also branding for event sponsors by printing lanyards.

Event lanyards

The lanyards included the attendee’s photo and their schedule. Catalina Bloch, MDRN’s creative director, explained. “One of the big things is a lot of corporate, trade shows and brand launches are centered on making high-quality prints on the spot.”

MDRN Photobooth Company and DNP printers

A person registering for an event would step up to the photo booth and take their picture. Then they enter their name and schedule. The printer produces a branded attendee badge. Catalina said, “And then we would just fold it and put it inside a little plastic folder and then that’s how they get the lanyard.”

DNP offers a lot of perforated media choices. Catalina likes the 4-by-6 inch media that has a center perforation allowing it to be split into two 2-by-3 inch prints, the size of business cards.

Photo & raffle ticket in one

Catalina explains how her company helps with branding during events, “The printed photo becomes part of the language for a brand, whenever we’re doing product events. The photos have a section that would rip off the bottom.”

MDRN Photobooth Company and DNP printers

She said, “That bottom portion can be a raffle ticket a discount code, a drink ticket or anything that you want without having to ruin the photo. So that’s how we use perforated media.”

Albums

DNP prints are really affordable. Catalina suggests that instead of sending a client digital photos an hour or so after a portrait or boudoir shoot why not print an album on the spot? “It costs maybe $50 to print an entire session.” she says, “An album retails for $1,000. There’s a huge opportunity here. People are more inclined to purchase a tangible product that gives them instant gratification and the markup on prints is significant when you are a portrait or boudoir photographer yet the cost is minimal.”

Weddings to events

MDRN Photobooth Company and DNP printers
Catalina Bloch, MDRN’s creative director

“I actually started off being a wedding photographer. I had just finished a couple of years of second shooting and I was ready to kind of go out on my own,” Catalina said. “I quickly realized that you need to charge like $5,000 in order to actually make any money as a wedding photographer.”

Catalina was attending WPPI when she discovered a photo booth company in the trade show. She stepped up, took her picture and got a print right away. “I’m like, this is not a photo booth! It’s not a badly cropped strip of photos made with a s**tty webcam that nobody wants,” she said, recalling her first encounter with a DNP printer.

“And it just clicked for some reason. So I actually put the $10,000 photo booth on my emergency credit card and I had 30 days to figure out how to tell my parents about money on their card. But it worked out and I paid off my first photo booth in a month so I bought my second one, and I couldn’t keep up with it.”

Her choice: Career or business

“I had to make the choice: Do I continue with my business, or do I continue with my career.” Catalina remembers. “I didn’t love my career. So I thought I want to do this. It’s been six years and we’re still going strong. So, yeah, that’s how it all happened.”