UCSB Students are getting ready for graduation photos and my goal this year is to capture the most Isla Vista (IV) photos possible, here are a few from my grad session with Eden.
To get your own photos taken email me or visit IVGradPhotos.com
“When were you gonna tell me that you got your own bus? 😂” This is a question I’ve been asked a few times in the past 24 hours, so here is the full breakdown/answer :)
It’s really a simple story of how I got my name/website link on a bus.
A few weeks ago I bought two tickets for a Onesie Pajama themed bar crawl event that was set to take place in Downtown Santa Barbara at 6:30pm on a chilly January Saturday. Many of my friends had purchased tickets as well, but when I asked people how they were getting to Downtown they’d said “idk Uber probs.”
Typically students from UCSB and SBCC go downtown on Thursday nights for College Night and take the party bus (aka Bill’s Bus which runs at the same time every week) at 9:30pm or 10:30pm.
*10am Friday (32.5 hours before the bus arrives)
I was at my girlfriend’s house and asked the girls how they’re getting downtown, they weren’t sure so I said “Someone should just rent a party bus and sell spots on it….” Welp! I decided that someone could be me, so I quickly searched for party bus rentals in Santa Barbara, called a few and got the quickest response/friendliest service from Jump on the School Bus, a company I was familiar with because they also run a weekly bus to downtown. Anyways I told Darin (the owner of JOTSB) of my plan to sell spots and said I’d get back to him within an hour to confirm for the bus.
10 text messages and a Facebook post later, I was pretty confident I could fill the bus. So I called and booked the bus for $500. So far I had Venmo payments from 12 people confirmed, for a bus that could fit 52. I’d need about $10 per person from a full bus to break even, so I made the price $11 (in case it didn’t fill up completely) and hoped for the best.
2pm Friday (28.5 hours before the bus arrives)
I received the contract via email to sign for the bus and only then did I realize I’m supposed to tip the driver 18%, simple math shows that at $11 per ticket I’d be losing money by doing this! So I quickly posted on Facebook “Price goes up to $15 at 3pm!” That helped book a few more tickets within the hour but so many people were still up in the air because entire groups were trying to decide if they were hopping on the bus or not.
After checking out the bus website and seeing the page about custom lettering on the side, I had to ask if I could get two different sides done. Thankfully it only took one text message to get the okay from Darin and it was set. The passenger side would have ”IVGRADPHOTOS.com” and the driver side would have ”BENREVZIN.com.” This made me really excited, I’d get to advertise on a bus for free if I broke even, my name would be in big letters on a bus in Isla Vista, and I could write this off on my taxes as a marketing expense, woohooo!
12pm Saturday (6.5 hours before the bus arrives)
My phone was going off every few minutes with confirmed guests asking if their friends could join as well! It became a first pay first serve situation, and the bus filled up by 2pm. I even received payments after the bus had filled up (from people who didn’t check with me before paying) so I had to send the money back and apologize.
The bus was set to come at 6:30pm and depart at 6:45pm, this small window slightly stressed me out for two reasons.
1) I’d have to get all 50 people to actually show up on time.
Well, what would people be doing that would make them late? Oh yeah pregaming for the bars and taking tons of iPhone pictures of each other for Instagram. I couldn’t provide alcohol but I could provide much higher quality photos so that’s exactly what I did. I set up a photo booth with a studio strobe by the bus stop and invited people to arrive at 6pm to get their group photos. Huge thank you to my friend Aviel who stepped up to shoot the photos and breakdown the gear so I could hop onto the bus with everyone.
2) These people paid for tickets and the bus’ maximum capacity is 52.
If someone who didn’t pay were to sneak onto the bus, then an actual paying rider wouldn’t be allowed on. To make sure this didn’t happen I made an Excel spreadsheet with the names of those who paid and put it in alphabetical order. Unfortunately, a few hours before showtime the printer ran out of ink and would not print. Not to worry! Google Docs offline mode + a laptop made marking off passengers easy as they boarded the bus.
Running the photo booth and checking people onto the bus at the same time would be impossible. I wanted to do both but knew I’d need help. Immediately I thought I need a bouncer for the bus and a photographer for the photobooth, Aviel and Dom’s names came into my head instantly and thankfully they were willing to help out! Couldn’t have pulled this off without them.
So what did I learn?
- Set your pricing once you know the final cost with all fees, tips, etc.
- You need other people (great friends) to pull something off smoothly
- 32 hours is enough time to book a party bus and sell it out completely.
- Blasting Mo Bamba on a bus with 52 people is the most fun you can have on the road
Thank you to Kseniya, Dom, Aviel, Fiara, Tess, and Rahul for helping me fill the bus and making sure I had a good time doing it :)
After sending this photo to almost a hundred people I decided to share a before/after and some metadata here.
The image is just one exposure, handheld from my Nikon D800 with a Tamron 24-70mm F/2.8 VC lens. Shot at 1/5th of a second.
