We Create Experiences People Remember -
and Brands Can Measure.

We do more than place a camera at an event. We help create the moment guests line up for, share with their friends, take home, and continue talking about after the event is over.

From a Niagara Photo Booth Company to a North American Experiential Partner

Booth Empire started with wedding gift money and a simple observation. When Jon and Sarah Ohlsson got married in 2019, they watched their most reserved friends become the life of the party thanks to the photo booth at their reception. That moment sparked an idea: what if they could bring that same infectious joy to other people's events?

They invested their wedding gift money into a Magic Mirror photo booth and launched Photo Booth Niagara, serving weddings and local events across the Niagara Region. For the first few years, both Jon and Sarah ran the business while holding full-time jobs. Sarah eventually took the leap and started running it full-time, while Jon continued working both his career and the business on evenings and weekends.

The company grew quickly. Within a few seasons they were running over 100 weddings annually and had earned preferred-vendor status at venues like Vintage Hotels, Club Roma, and the Buffalo Canoe Club. Corporate clients followed, including Pepsi, Manulife, and Jackson Triggs.

But as the client base expanded, a pattern emerged. Weddings were seasonal and non-recurring. The clients who kept coming back were the corporate ones, the brand teams, the agencies, and the experiential marketing producers who needed custom activations, not standard rentals. They wanted AI experiences, Glambot productions, custom trading cards, branded installations, and multi-city programs.

So in 2023, Jon and Sarah made the decision to rebrand. Photo Booth Niagara became Booth Empire, a name built to capture the broader corporate, brand activation, and experiential marketing market they were already serving. The rebrand was not cosmetic. It reflected a fundamental shift in what the company builds and who it builds for.

Today, Booth Empire is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, with a team of 11 people producing activations across Canada and the United States. The work spans professional sporting events, film festivals, conferences, product launches, corporate celebrations, university events, and national brand activations for clients including the Toronto Blue Jays, TIFF, IMDb, L'Or\u00e9al Paris, PUMA, and the Detroit Lions.

Jon and Sarah still own and operate the company together. Jon leads creative direction, technical production, and business development. Sarah oversees operations, client relationships, and the logistics that make every activation run cleanly. Both remain hands-on at events because the details that make a great activation are the details you can only catch when you are in the room.

Built Around the Event - Not the Equipment

No two events have the same audience, venue, campaign goals, timeline, or creative direction. That is why we do not believe in forcing every client into the same cookie-cutter package.

We start by understanding what the experience needs to accomplish. Is the goal to increase brand visibility? Move hundreds of guests through an activation efficiently? Create social content? Capture leads and consented data? Produce a premium keepsake? Entertain guests without interrupting the flow of the event?

Once we understand the objective, we recommend the right experience, equipment, staffing, footprint, guest flow, branding, and delivery method.

For a high-volume event, that may mean multiple stations to prevent long lineups. For a brand launch, it may mean a fully wrapped booth, customized user interface, branded backdrop, instant sharing, and post-event analytics. For a corporate celebration, it may mean combining polished printed portraits with playful AI transformations.

The technology matters - but how it fits into the event matters more.

Creative Experiences, Professionally Executed

Our activation capabilities include:

Branded Photo Booth Experiences

Custom-designed digital and print photo booths with branded interfaces, photo templates, booth wraps, backdrops, instant sharing, data collection, surveys, and on-site printing.

AI Photo Activations

Transform guests into characters, athletes, professionals, illustrations, campaign concepts, or completely original branded creations using customized AI workflows.

Glambot Productions

Cinematic slow-motion video captured with a professional robotic camera arm, high-frame-rate cinema equipment, studio lighting, experienced operators, and custom branded edits.

Custom Trading Cards

Personalized sports, gaming, employee, or character cards created and printed on-site, with options for background removal, multiple designs, custom statistics, branded card backs, protective sleeves, and sealed packaging.

Portrait and Headshot Studios

Professional photography stations designed for conferences, employee events, recruitment programs, executive portraits, and branded editorial-style photography.

360 and Video Experiences

Slow-motion 360 videos, video confessionals, roaming content capture, branded interviews, and shareable social content designed around the event.

Custom Activations

When an existing service is not the right fit, we can combine technology, photography, video, printing, fabrication, branding, and custom software into a completely original experience.

Experience at Every Scale

Our team has produced activations for organizations and events including the Toronto Blue Jays, TIFF, IMDb, L'Oreal Paris, Pepsi, and the Detroit Lions.

We have supported intimate corporate gatherings, weddings, professional sporting events, multi-day conferences, festivals, and national activations operating in multiple cities.

Regardless of the size of the event, our approach remains the same: understand the goal, plan the details, protect the guest experience, and execute professionally.

A visually impressive activation is only successful when it also works operationally. Equipment must arrive on time. Branding must be accurate. Staff must understand the experience. Lines must keep moving. Images must look consistent. Sharing and printing must work. Problems must be addressed immediately - not after the event.

That behind-the-scenes preparation is what allows the experience to feel effortless for guests and event teams.

Why Clients Choose Booth Empire

Custom, Not Cookie-Cutter

Every activation can be adapted to the campaign, audience, venue, and creative direction. We are comfortable working from established brand guidelines or helping develop an original concept from the ground up.

Guest Experience Comes First

We carefully consider participation time, throughput, line management, staffing, accessibility, and the physical footprint of the activation. We will recommend additional stations or a different format when it will create a better experience - even when the simpler answer would be easier to sell.

Professional Production Quality

We invest in professional cameras, cinema equipment, lighting, printing systems, robotic technology, software, and backup equipment to produce content that looks appropriate alongside the brands we represent.

Branding at Every Touchpoint

The booth, interface, backdrop, photo, video, print, card, packaging, sharing screen, and gallery can all become part of a cohesive branded experience.

Physical and Digital Keepsakes

Guests can leave with an instant print, trading card, portrait, or other physical keepsake while also receiving content digitally through QR code, text, or email.

Measurable Event Reporting

Depending on the activation, we can provide participation totals, sharing data, lead capture, surveys, consent-based marketing opt-ins, galleries, and post-event analytics to help clients understand the reach and performance of the experience.

Reliable, Hands-On Support

Our team manages the details from initial planning and creative development through setup, live operation, troubleshooting, teardown, and final asset delivery.

A Family Business with Big-Event Capabilities

Booth Empire has grown considerably since 2019, but we have never wanted to lose the accountability that comes with being an owner-operated company.

Our clients are not passed through a system and forgotten once the contract is signed. We remain involved because our reputation is attached to every experience we deliver.

We care about the creative concept, but we also care about the details guests may never notice: how quickly a station processes each person, whether the layout creates a bottleneck, how the lighting will perform in the venue, whether the branding is positioned correctly, and what happens if something unexpected changes on event day.

That combination of personal accountability and large-scale production capability is at the centre of Booth Empire.

Let's Build Something People Will Talk About

Whether you are planning a national brand activation, corporate event, conference, sporting event, festival, product launch, wedding, or completely original experience, our team can help you turn the idea into something guests can see, experience, share, and remember.

Tell us about your event, audience, goals, location, and creative direction. We will help determine the right activation and build a customized, results-focused proposal around it.

Bring us the event. We'll help create the moment.