������Ƶ

Having a high-quality headshot for your LinkedIn profile can be the difference between piquing an employer’s interest and your page getting passed over.

In the past, the Fleishman Center has hosted LinkedIn Photo Booth events with a professional photographer, since a well-lit photo can be difficult to take on your own. Time slots for the event would fill up in mere days or less after a new session was announced. With each semester, the demand for LinkedIn headshots continued to grow.

Julia Sullivan, the Fleishman Center’s marketing coordinator and previous organizer of the photo booth events, noticed it became increasingly difficult to accommodate every student who needed a headshot, which is so important for marketing oneself for work. 

“The photo booth events have always been super popular because they give students an edge online,” she said. “When they are creating their LinkedIn profiles, accounts, and other professional profiles, having a high-quality headshot helps the accounts to look more polished. It also gives students a confidence boost to put themselves out there and network with professionals.”

To ensure that no student, staff or alumni would have to go without a good photo, the Fleishman Center and the Alumni Office cosponsored the installation of the Iris Photo Booth in the Fleishman Center office. The Iris Photo Booth allows users to step inside for a private photoshoot—the booth is completely self-service. ������Ƶ is one of only three college campuses in the U.S. with this convenient photo tool.

“The Iris Photo Booth is a fantastic addition to our office because it gives students the ability to take unlimited professional photos and helps them put their best foot forward online,” Julia said.

Any time that the Fleishman Center office is open, students, staff and alumni can come for a session and take three headshots, with no appointment required. The booth totes a studio-quality camera and lighting, and the ability to crop photos, touch up blemishes, whiten teeth, apply filters, and retake photos. The Iris Booth’s digital platform allows you to access all the photos you’ve taken over all of your sessions. As of the beginning of November 2022, over 720 unique users have taken 3,498 photos since its August installation. 

Fiona Guo, a student staff member at the Fleishman Center sees that taking a professional photo can be anxiety-inducing for students. The Iris Photo Booth helps ease some of that pressure.

“It’s a great tool for all students and alumni to use,” Fiona remarked. “The booth is private, the pictures always come out really good because of the lighting, and it’s something that you can keep using; so if you don’t like the photo, you can just go again.”

Alumni are also able to use the booth, even after they leave campus. As news about this resource is spreading, more alumni have come to use the booth while visiting town, with a few former students popping in during Homecoming Weekend. 

Having a self-serve booth available for open access weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. helps students, staff and alumni to access this resource at their own convenience. Joshua Samuel, another student staff member at the Fleishman Center, sees the booth as a helpful tool for students entering the professional world.

“It’s really cool that the Fleishman Center brought this here because it makes it accessible to take professional headshots for people to whom it may not be otherwise,” Joshua said. “They come out really good, you can take as many as you’d like, and it really just gives the opportunity to pretty much anybody on campus”

All Binghamton students, faculty, staff and alumni can take free, studio-quality headshots in the booth during office hours (9 a.m. to 4 p.m.).

by Erin Zipman