Rating: ★★★★☆

London is a city of everything. The capital of England is home to some of the most creative and unique experiences you can find anywhere and one of these experiences is the Selfie Factory and as a London-based photographer, I just had to find out what the photography experience is like for myself so called upon my dearest friend from university, Karolina.

The Selfie Factory describes itself as an Insta-friendly popup store and that’s definitely an accurate reflection. With an array of different backdrops and “rooms”, you book a one-hour slot for 15 pounds (per person) including the extra fees and then you show up on the day and get to snapping.

The Booking Experience

Starting from the beginning, the booking experience was very easy. The minimalistic website was easy to use so before too many clicks you’ll find yourself finding a date and timeslot with enough spots for your group. At checkout, you’re given an option to add branded pop sockets and quirky pin badges to your purchase. The booking process was quick and I was excited to find out what the selfie factory was really like in person!

We arrived quite early as we weren’t sure exactly where the popup was and after a bit of roaming around in the O2, we found the popup store adorned with a lovely pink sign. With a bit of time to spare, we decided to switch into our first outfits and thanks to the directions of the two friendly members of staff we found the shopping centre bathrooms and came back to a small queue of like-minded people who shared our slot - there was another professional photographer and a videographer in attendance alongside a child filming a dance video, an Instagram model/influencer and a few small groups of friends together.

When you first enter the store, you’ll see a bunch of different backdrops and then a few ‘rooms’ (they have three walls) with an arrangement slightly reminiscent of oversized changing booths (to be fair, one of those rooms is an actual changing room!). The common linkage between the different booths were distinctive and vibrant colours with a cartoonish feel - a bit like the children’s play centres you would dream of as a kid.

Once inside, everyone scatters between the different ‘rooms’ spending a few minutes here and there and we found that there was plenty of space for all of us to maintain social distancing although we didn’t know where to put our coats and bags and wished there was a small locker (even as an add-on) at the front of the store.

In fact, there was almost a warehouse feel to the store, you know that feeling of cool air against your skin? I’ve probably just described air conditioning but, really, it was great, considering the high energy buzz that took over our bodies owing to our self-imposed challenge of shooting with every backdrop and changing into multiple different outfits.

About 15 minutes into our hour, progress was quick, and we realised that an hour was actually a huge chunk of time and safely, in the knowledge that we would definitely accomplish our mission, we started to relax and time passed quite naturally. For an idea of how much time there is, after culling we have 417 photos in the gallery and took around 650 in total. Make sure you have the spare storage space when you go.

A professional photographer’s perspective

For great quality portraits, if you ask any photographer, it’s not as much as about the gear (ever since my Pixel 2XL in 2017, I realised that any camera is good enough) as it is the lighting. Each of the rooms in the Selfie Factory is lit with small selfie lights in the top corner. I tried to adjust one of these to give a more flattering look, but alas, it was pretty stiff and wasn’t having any of it. The benefit of the selfie lights are that it provides the high-contrast, vibrant look that you see in any photo taken there and you’ll never worry about the pictures being dark or grainy, but it falls short of being able to be described as great lighting.

The direct light source spreads unevenly through the rooms and casts a few shadows where you probably don’t want them (under eyes and nose), this was despite careful positioning of the subject, but it was definitely better than the overhead ceiling lights, so it feels harsh to criticise a 15 pound per hour location for that - I would have never expected the popup to run expensive lighting solutions in each room but it did slow down the editing process. See the before/after below to see how we used editing to combat the harsh shadows on the face.

If I went again, there could a temptation to bring along my own speedlite and diffuser but ultimately, I actually don’t think I would. I don’t see the Selfie Factory as being a location for scientifically perfect portraiture. The beauty of it is that it’s a fun, accessible experience designed for smartphone shooting and that should only be embraced. Having said that, both the photographer and videographer who were present during our session felt differently and had their own lights fully set up and firing.

I shot on my Sony A7 III but as I knew that this space was aimed at casual shooting I decided to emulate a smartphone look with 28mm F/2 lens - during editing, I kept sharpness relatively low and added some heavy grain too. In my bag, I had a few props including a few different prisms, normally reserved for our neon portraits, and some aviator glasses.

The 28mm was a great choice as it was wide enough to get full-body shots in the rooms without having to be too far away and if I could recommend one lens for the Selfie Factory, it would be that. However, we found that the backdrops were a bit too small and so we switched to a 50mm later to take tighter portraits with those.

The Verdict

Ultimately, we really really liked the look of each of the different ‘rooms’ on camera. Our business is on a mission to make London feel beautiful, one person at a time and the Selfie Factory really made us feel that. The advantage of being able to take photos with such variety in close proximity reminded us a little of our photo routes and it was a lot of fun! The rooms were amazing but the backdrops were slightly underwhelming thanks to the small size of the backdrops and the absence of lighting (those were just installed for the rooms) meant that the photos were lit by the overhead ceiling LEDs.

I am looking forward to going again once they refresh the rooms and backdrops (and hopefully get some lockers installed) to get more great photos and enjoy an hour of fun with the camera and can wholeheartedly recommend rounding up your friends and visiting.