Photo Booths in Nashville

The Photo Booth Scene in Nashville

Nashville's photo booth scene is smaller than you'd expect for a city this size, but what it lacks in volume it makes up for in character. The city's booths are concentrated in two distinct worlds: the tourist strip of Lower Broadway, where analog machines in honky-tonks and multi-story bars provide a keepsake experience for bachelorette parties and first-time visitors; and the real Nashville — East Nashville, Wedgewood-Houston, and the Gulch — where locals have been using film booths in dive bars and music venues for years. Third Man Records, the defining institution of Nashville's music culture, operated a color chemical photobooth for years before its machine relocated to The Blue Room next door, where it now produces black-and-white strips for $5 cash. That booth is the best in the city: authentic film process, four frames, no digital mimicry. Fifth + Broadway, Nashville's upscale retail and entertainment complex, has multiple booths aimed at the tourist market. Wild Beaver Saloon and Sid Gold's Request Room on the Broadway strip both have machines. The Gulch has Pins Mechanical's arcade bar setup. Across all of Nashville, the booth culture is more visitor-driven than resident-driven — but Third Man and The Blue Room are proof that the city has a real analog photography community underneath the tourism surface.