What we did

Over Motor City Pride weekend, June 7 and 8, 2025, Rocket set up My Chosen Family Portraits at Hart Plaza. The idea was simple: a proper portrait of you and the people you call family, free, in the middle of the festival.

Rocket’s in-house events team ran the activation, and Rocket’s photographers, Eli Lindauer and Hayley, shot the portraits. We built the custom tech behind it: the capture, the instant delivery, and the pieces that kept a two-day line moving. Groups of every size stepped in, got directed through a few frames, and had the portrait on their phones before they walked away.

Joy Crocker, Rocket’s creative director, led the idea. Portraits went up on a digital gallery wall in a “foyer” built into the set, printed for guests on site, and went out through a microsite.

The studio logged 2,899 sessions across the two days. See it on Instagram.

Rocket brought it back for Motor City Pride 2026, and that year Bill Hamway shot the portraits as well as running the tech.

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