First Selfie Studio Opens In Canada's Vancouver

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Published on Saturday, 10 January 2015 11:34

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In the Vancouver suburb of Canada's western coastal city of Richmond, a selfie studio has just opened, with dozens of customers coming to enjoy taking self-portraits every day, reports Xinhua news agency.

For just 15 Canadian dollars (US$12.7), the customer can choose from an array of props, and then pose and shoot his or her own photos with a remote controlled DSLR camera.

The do-it-yourself studio, Selfie Room, is professionally lit, and comes with a compliment of several backdrops. Within a week after the opening, more than 40 groups have come in for the 50-minute selfie sessions.

"You really get to control how you take the photo, and you look on the camera yourself. You get to control the camera, control the backdrop. So, every customer really takes that perfect photo that person desires," said the owner of the selfie studio, a Hong Kong-born business woman Carbo Ngai, on Thursday.

The 22-year-old Ngai told Xinhua that selfie studios became popular in Asia about a year ago, and there are now dozens of similar businesses in Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand. However, her studio in Richmond is the first of its kind in Vancouver.

The Selfie Room has been attracting mostly teens, but Ngai said it has had a surprisingly diverse clientele showing up as well.

"We've started seeing families come in, we've had elderly couples...it' s pretty diverse. We've had children and families... we've had pets come in to take some photo shoots as well," she said.

Ngai said that the main goal of this idea was to offer customers a good time with friends and family, and a comfortable place to take wacky photos by themselves.

In the studio, customer Emily Rock was very excited about taking photos by herself.

"Oh, it was really fun. Like we really didn't expect this. We'd seen an ad for this place online, we're like cool, we'll go check it out and we came in and had no idea this was going to happen, but it's a really pleasant surprise," said Rock.

The studio can accommodate a group of 10 persons at a time, and Ngai expected the studio to attract fun-loving people who were looking to create their own unique photos for events such as weddings, family portraits or even graduations.

"They're free to do whatever they want in that 50-minute session. They can use all the props they want, take as many photos as they like, view each shot immediately on a preview screen, and then at the end of it. We'll give them all the photos in a USB," Ngai said.