The Lab 2026
Where the next thing we offer is still being figured out — and where the couples who come in early pay the base rate.
In development · 2026
Three things we're building this season.
We run new services the way a trial runs: an idea is tested for free, then offered at a base rate at real weddings, and only then priced and put on the menu. All three below are in Phase II.
Same-day editing
The idea
A short film — or a set of finished photographs — cut, coloured and shown before the reception ends. The editor works from a corner of the venue while the day is still happening, so the first thing your guests see of the wedding is the wedding itself, that night, on the screen you already paid for.
Why we're adding it
The wait between the wedding and the delivery is the question we're asked about most on calls, and for years the honest answer was "weeks." We've spent two seasons learning how much of a day can be cut on site without it looking rushed, and the answer is more than we expected. Building it as a Lab service lets us refine the workflow at real weddings instead of guessing.
Why couples enjoy it
The room goes quiet when the film starts. Parents who watched the ceremony from the fourth row see it again from the front; the friends who flew in leave having already relived it; and you wake up married with something to send, not a "photos coming soon" text. It does not replace the full film or gallery — it is the first taste of them.
Polaroid coverage
The idea
A photographer working a real instant camera through your reception and handing each print to the people in it. Roughly eighty to a hundred prints across an evening. Each one exists exactly once — there is no file, no negative and no second copy — and each one leaves in somebody's pocket.
Why we're adding it
A Polaroid booth puts the camera in a guest's hands and the results on a table. We wanted the opposite: the same instant print, but taken by someone who knows where the light is and when the moment is about to happen. It's the one thing our coverage couldn't do before — give something away on the night — and it turns out to be the thing guests talk about on the way home.
Why couples enjoy it
It is the only thing we do that your guests take home the same night. Grandparents end up with a print of themselves they didn't pose for; the flower girl has one on her fridge for a decade; and the couple discovers, weeks later, which prints people kept. Nothing comes back to you — that's the point of it.
Wedding content creation
The idea
Vertical, shot on a phone, edited in the room and posted while the day is still happening. A dedicated content creator moves alongside the photographers and filmmakers, capturing the getting-ready chaos, the first look, the entrance, and cutting it into the clips your friends will actually watch on their phones that night.
Why we're adding it
Couples were already asking a bridesmaid or a cousin to do this, and losing a guest to the job. We'd rather the person holding the phone knew where to stand, when to stay out of the real cameras' frame, and how to hand you something finished instead of a camera roll. It sits alongside photography and film rather than replacing either.
Why couples enjoy it
The midnight clip. The friend who couldn't make it seeing the first dance before the night is over. A wedding reel that looks like it was made by someone who was there, because they were — and a gallery and film, later, that are exactly as considered as they've always been.
How the Lab works
Three phases, like a trial.
Every new service has to earn its way onto the menu. Nothing skips a phase, and nothing is sold at full price until it has survived a season of real weddings.
Idea & testing
Complimentary to clients
An artist on the team keeps bringing something up. We borrow or buy the kit, test it on each other and on styled shoots, then bring it to a handful of weddings at no charge for couples who say yes to being first. If it doesn't work in a room we control, it never reaches a wedding.
Base-rate offers at weddings
Where all three are now
The service runs at real weddings for a reduced base rate — our thanks to the couples who let us refine it on the most important day they'll plan. It is always added to your coverage, never swapped in for part of it, and you know in writing what's guaranteed and what's best-effort before you sign. Ask for the current base rate on your call.
Fully deployed
Full price, on the menu
It gets its own page, its own price and a place in the collections. The base rate ends for new bookings; couples who booked in Phase II keep the rate they booked at. And if a service never makes it here, it comes off this page quietly — that's a result too.
2027 and beyond
There are things on the bench
we're not ready to name.
Not because they're secret — because they're unproven, and putting a name on an unproven thing is exactly how a studio ends up selling something it can't deliver. When they survive stage one they'll appear on this page before they appear anywhere else, at the rate early couples get.
If there's something you wish a wedding photographer offered and nobody seems to, tell us. A surprising amount of what's on this page started as a question from a couple on a first call.
The archive
The Lab isn't new. It just never had a page.
Everything below started the same way the 2026 list is starting now — as something we weren't sure would work. Some of it became a standing part of what we offer. Some of it comes out for the couples who ask.
Still offered
35mm film
Colour negative running alongside the digital coverage — a roll or two through the day, developed and scanned after. It is slower, it is finite, and it makes everyone in front of it behave differently.
35mm film weddings →
Still offered
Leica and 120mm film
Rangefinders on the day itself, medium format for portraits. Manual focus at a moving wedding is a genuinely bad idea until it isn't — and then it gives you frames a zoom lens never will.
Film weddings on Leica →
Still offered
Monochrome bodies
Cameras that can only see in black and white — no colour to convert, no colour to fall back on. You commit at the moment of the frame, which is either terrifying or the entire point.
Black and white coverage →
By request
Super 8 and 16mm
Motion picture film, cut into the wedding film as texture rather than as the whole thing. Three-minute loads, no playback, and a lab standing between you and knowing whether it worked.
Super 8 and 16mm films →
Folded into the films
Cinema cameras
RED bodies on wedding days, back when that meant carrying a rig built for a film set into a reception. What survived is the way we light and cut a wedding film; the weight, thankfully, did not.
Wedding films →
A whole separate room
The portrait studio
Painted backdrops, built light, no daylight and no timeline — the opposite of a wedding in every respect. It taught us more about lighting a face than any wedding ever has.
Portrait studio →Questions
What being in the Lab actually means for you.
What is The Lab, exactly?
It's the part of Lulan Studio where new services are developed before they become services. Some of what's here will be on our main menu within a year; some of it will never leave this page. We publish it because we'd rather you saw the work in progress than only the finished brochure.
If I book something that's still in development, what am I actually getting?
A service we've already tested off the calendar and are now running at real weddings, delivered by the same team as the rest of your coverage. What you're accepting is that the format is still being refined — the deliverable may change shape between now and your date, and we'll tell you if it does. What you're not accepting is any risk to your main coverage.
What does Phase II actually cost?
Ask us on your call. Phase II is a reduced base rate that differs by service and moves as a service gets closer to full launch, so any number printed here would be wrong by the time you read it. What we can tell you is that it sits meaningfully below the Phase III price, and that the rate you book at is the rate you keep.
Will a Lab service take a photographer away from my ceremony?
No. Anything from this page is added to your coverage rather than carved out of it — if a service needs a person, it comes with its own person. Working out how to staff a new service without touching the main team is usually the hardest part of getting it out of the Lab.
What happens if it doesn't work on the day?
Your photography and film are unaffected, because they're covered by the standard team and the standard process. For the Lab element itself we tell you in advance, in writing, exactly what is guaranteed and what is best-effort — and if we can't guarantee something, we say so rather than hoping.
Can I ask for something that isn't on this page?
Please do. Several things we now offer as standard began as a request from one couple that we didn't have a name for yet. If it's something we can test safely, we'll tell you honestly whether we can have it ready for your date.
Do you work outside Los Angeles?
Yes — Orange County, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Las Vegas are all regular territory for us, and Lab services travel with the rest of the team. Anything that needs specific equipment or an extra person is easier to arrange the earlier you ask.
Next
Come be early.
Tell us your date and what you're curious about. We'll tell you what's ready, what isn't, and what it would cost to be one of the couples who helps us find out.
Lulan Studio is a wedding photography and film studio based in Los Angeles, working across wedding photography, wedding films, engagement sessions and prints and albums. The Lab is where new services are developed in the open — meet the artists behind them, read how the studio works, or see our current collections.