You have a photographer lined up for your wedding, of course, but with all the other wanna-be photographers snapping your picture on the Big Day, there are bound to be a number of gems among them… some that the photographer might even have missed.
For example, the NY Times reports that at Rush Hambleton’s wedding in 2005, “my wife and I left the wedding on a restored Vespa motor scooter, sailing off into darkness,” he says. “The photographer missed the shot.” Luckily, a friend happened to snap a picture, and sent a print to the thankful couple a few weeks later. This experience led Mr. Hambleton, to wonder how many significant photographs are taken by camera-toting guests — and how many brides and grooms never see them.
A graduate student at Babson’s F. W. Olin Graduate School of Business, Rush Hambleton invented a computer-based kiosk for events like wedding receptions. As guests leave, they are invited to insert their cameras’ memory cards into the device. The kiosk stores the photos on a thumb drive that the bride and groom can take home. (His research showed guests didn’t want all those photos anyway.)
The kiosk, the size of a small cabinet, has been to 11 weddings so far as well as summer camps. The next step is to raise half a million dollars to pay for miniaturizing the kiosk — he wants it small enough to be packed and shipped. “That’s how this goes from a concept to a business,” he says.
Mr. Hambleton, 33, isn’t new to start-ups. In 2001 he founded a company that provides services for yacht captains, and he sold it three years later. Last year, bubbling over with business ideas, he enrolled at Babson. He marvels at the relevance of the learning: “There have been times when I’m doing homework on Tuesday that relates to what I’m talking to investors about on Thursday. These are just-in-time lessons.”
In any case, whether you are using Mr. Hambleton’s invention or rigging up your own contraption, this is a great idea for anyone who wants to make certain of keeping all the prize-winning wedding pictures… before your geusts dissapear with them forever!
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