{"id":651617,"date":"2026-08-23T02:34:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T02:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/651617\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T02:34:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T02:34:16","slug":"step-back-in-time-with-maines-only-analog-photo-booth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/651617\/","title":{"rendered":"Step back in time with Maine’s only analog photo booth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Step back in time with Maine’s only analog photo booth<\/p>\n

There are fewer than 300 analog photo booths left in the world; one of them can be found at a pizza spot in Portland.<\/p>\n

\"Jacob<\/a>PORTLAND, Maine \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

Walking into Off Track Pizza on Exchange Street, your eyes might gloss over the roughly 6-foot-tall box standing toward the end of the order counter. Staff members have created a dedicated waiting area. It’s a photobooth, but there’s something particularly special about this one.<\/p>\n

It’s an analog photobooth, a relic that has become very rare today.<\/p>\n

Margaret Skiff helps to operate the machine. She said there are fewer than 300 analog photo booths left in the world.<\/p>\n

“A lot of people do think it’s ink and a printer,” Skiff said. “That’s not at all what it is.”<\/p>\n

What sets an analog photo booth apart is how it takes the picture, and that becomes more obvious when you look inside the machines. Analog booths use photographic paper and a miniature darkroom inside the machine to develop photos. <\/p>\n

The booth sitting inside Off Track Pizza uses seven mechanical arms, altogether called “the spider,” that dip the paper into several chemical wells. The entire process takes about four minutes for the photo to fully develop. The arms allow seven different photos to develop at a time, so people don’t have to wait until photos are done developing for their turn.<\/p>\n

The machinery inside is complex and made with delicate parts that routinely need to be maintained. This is part of the reason why analog photobooths fell out of fashion once digital photobooths became more widely available. <\/p>\n

The photo booth moved into Off Track Pizza earlier this year. Previously, the next closest analog photo booth was in Northampton, Massachusetts. Skiff said it’s been doing particularly well this summer.<\/p>\n

“It is just the appreciation for old stuff, art and culture that I think is so deeply rooted in Maine. I think that a big reason why it fits here is that people my age appreciate it just as much as people who grew up with these booths,” Skiff said.<\/p>\n

It costs $8 for a photo strip. Skiff said people looking for the perfect photo should make sure they are at eye level with the camera and to use the background curtain, especially if they have fair skin.<\/p>\n

Off Track Pizza is planned to be the permanent home of the photo booth for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Step back in time with Maine’s only analog photo booth There are fewer than 300 analog photo booths…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[7731,365,362,363,364,275360,366,18,117,8382,124587,275352,23078,5489,19,17,13341,11447,275356,275359,217179,275348,275353,275354,275361,275357,237,122152,275358,275355,275349,275350,275351,763,80655,1093,2619],"class_list":["post-651617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-analog","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-delicate-part","tag-design","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-eye","tag-film-camera","tag-film-photobooth","tag-historic","tag-history","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-machine","tag-maine","tag-margaret-skiff","tag-mechanical-arm","tag-northampton","tag-off-track-pizza","tag-old-camera","tag-old-photobooth","tag-old-stuff","tag-only-analog-photo-booth","tag-people","tag-photobooth","tag-photographic-paper","tag-pizza-spots","tag-portland-late-night","tag-portland-lunch","tag-portland-restaurants","tag-reason","tag-throwback","tag-time","tag-vintage"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}