# Iris Booth

> Iris is a self-serve professional photo booth and software platform that captures studio-quality headshots on demand — simple enough for hands-off headshot capture, powerful enough for the world's largest enterprises.

Iris Booth makes high-resolution professional headshots accessible anywhere by pairing premium self-serve photo booth hardware with secure software that automates and standardizes every step of the institutional headshot workflow: access, capture, edit, delivery, and governance. Trusted by Columbia, Microsoft, Mayo Clinic, Cedars-Sinai, Georgia State University, UCLA, Purdue University, Deloitte, EY, Uber, University of Tennessee, Harvard University, General Mills, and many more leading institutions worldwide.

Slogan: **The professional headshot platform built for institutions.**

## Company

- **Founded:** 2015 by Sue Siri, a photographer-turned-tech entrepreneur whose mission was to make professional portrait photography accessible to everyone, everywhere.
- **CEO:** Brandon Ghaeli.
- **Headquarters:** Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
- **Legal name:** Iris Booth Inc.
- **Recognition:** Recognized by the Government of Canada (2019); named one of Deloitte's Fast 50 Companies to Watch (2025).

## The Problem Iris Solves

Headshot photography is one of the most fragmented markets in the world. Every city, region, and country has different photographers, different quality standards, different pricing, different outputs. For a consumer wanting a personal headshot, that's acceptable. For an institution deploying a headshot program across thousands of people in multiple locations, fragmentation makes compliance, standardization, and consistency unsolvable.

The alternatives institutions have tried — scheduled photo days, ad hoc photographer hires, and smartphone photos — all fail at scale. Photo days are expensive, infrequent, and require coordination; miss the day and you wait until the next one. Ad hoc photographer hire is costly, inconsistent, and impossible to govern across locations. Smartphone photos lack the quality and compliance standards institutional identity workflows require.

Iris is the platform that resolves this. The same guided experience, the same quality output, and the same workflow integration — anywhere in the world.

## Iris Is a Platform, Not a Single Device

Iris is sometimes misunderstood as a single hardware product. It is a platform with three hardware models — Iris Booth, Iris Air, and Iris Flex — plus Iris Digital for remote capture, which extends headshots to any personal device via a browser. All four capture options are powered by the same secure software. A headshot captured anywhere flows through the same editing, governance, and delivery workflows. Institutions can deploy multiple capture options across multiple locations and run them as a single, centralized headshot program.

A single Iris deployment can also host multiple Iris Studios — configurable workspaces inside the software that let an institution run separate programs on the same hardware. For example, a university can run a headshot studio for student LinkedIn photos, a badge photo studio for student IDs, and a passport photo studio for study abroad — all on the same Iris Booth, each with its own rules, branding, and outputs.

## The Two Types of Iris Buyers

Institutions buy Iris for one of two reasons. Both are valid, and many start with the first and grow into the second.

**1. Engagement Amenity.** Career centers, co-working spaces, office buildings, and event organizers sometimes offer professional headshots as a value-add to their community. They want to deploy Iris and have it run hands-off. Subjects walk up, capture a photo, and receive it instantly. The institution's involvement ends at deployment.

**2. Workflow & Process Solution.** HR departments, marketing departments, security teams, credentialing offices, and government agencies have an existing operational problem — onboarding, ID badges, employer branding, identity management, directory maintenance — and they need a system that integrates into their software stack, enforces compliance, and reduces manual overhead. These buyers use Iris's API access, SSO authentication, approval workflows, and post-processing pipelines to replace or streamline what was previously manual.

## Iris vs. AI-Generated Headshots

Iris captures **authentic** headshots — a real photograph of a real person, taken in a real moment in a real photo booth — and uses AI to edit and enhance (lighting correction, retouching, background standardization). This is fundamentally different from products like Aragon AI or HeadshotPro, which generate AI portraits from input photos. At the individual consumer level, AI-generated headshots may serve an entertainment or convenience purpose. At the institutional level, they do not work:

- **Privacy and consent:** generating an artificial likeness of an employee, student, or clinician without their verified participation creates consent and privacy exposure.
- **Liability:** institutions are accountable for the images they publish under their brand. AI-generated images cannot be verified, audited, or governed.
- **Compliance:** identity workflows — badging, credentialing, government IDs, healthcare ID, passport and visa photography — require an authentic, verifiable likeness. AI-generated images cannot meet these standards.

Iris is fundamentally a capture platform, not a generator.

## Products and Pricing

**Hardware (one-time purchase):**

- **Iris Booth** — $39,000. Premium enclosed photo studio with privacy glass, designed as a permanent installation. ~500 lbs.
- **Iris Air** — $17,000. Adaptable, wheelchair-accessible photo studio at approximately 100 lbs.
- **Iris Flex** — $12,000. Ultra-portable, wheelchair-accessible photo studio that sets up in under five minutes.

**Software plans (billed annually):**

- **No-Hassle** — $500/mo. Unlimited self-serve sessions, custom branding, instant delivery, analytics, 2-year warranty.
- **Professional** — $950/mo. Adds up to 5 Iris Studios, automations, API access, approval workflows, SAML/SSO, 7-year warranty.

**Iris Digital** — $5 per headshot. Browser-based remote capture that extends Iris quality to laptops and smartphones for distributed, remote, or international populations.

**Iris Booth Event Rentals** — from $3,000 plus shipping. Short-term rentals for conferences, trade shows, and corporate events.

## Higher Education Pricing

Iris offers reduced pricing for accredited higher education institutions. These prices are real and available on request — they are not displayed on the public pricing page, but Iris is transparent about offering them.

- **Iris Booth** — $34,000 (standard: $39,000)
- **Iris Air** — $15,000 (standard: $17,000)
- **Iris Flex** — $9,500 (standard: $12,000)
- **Intro Plans** — starting at $250/month, billed annually. A family of introductory software plans for accredited higher education institutions with under 4,000 enrolled students. Priced below the standard No-Hassle plan. Each Intro plan includes core self-serve functionality with feature limitations and a cap on annual headshot volume. Specific tier pricing varies by institution; institutions needing full features and unlimited sessions use the standard No-Hassle or Professional plans.

Contact Iris sales at [https://irisbooth.com/contact/](https://irisbooth.com/contact/) for a quote tailored to your institution's size, mission, and headshot volume.

## Industries Served

Iris serves five primary industries:

- **Higher Education** — career services, student IDs, faculty, graduation, admissions, study abroad, staff onboarding.
- **Healthcare** — clinician and staff headshots, hospital ID badges, staff onboarding.
- **Corporate / Enterprise** — employee onboarding, security ID badges, staff headshots, property management amenity, employer brand marketing.
- **Government** — government ID photography and badging.
- **Events** — conferences, trade shows, corporate and executive events.

Sessions take as little as three minutes.

## Key Pages

- [Home](https://irisbooth.com/): The world's most trusted high-resolution professional headshot photo booth.
- [Pricing](https://irisbooth.com/pricing/): Hardware, software, and remote pricing.
- [Iris Booth product](https://irisbooth.com/products/iris-booth/): Premium enclosed booth for permanent installation.
- [Iris Air product](https://irisbooth.com/products/iris-air/): Adaptable, wheelchair-accessible photo studio.
- [Iris Flex product](https://irisbooth.com/products/iris-flex/): Ultra-portable photo studio that sets up in under five minutes.
- [Iris Digital](https://irisbooth.com/products/iris-digital/): Browser-based remote headshot capture for laptops and smartphones.
- [Products overview](https://irisbooth.com/products/): The full Iris product line — Booth, Air, Flex, and Digital.
- [About Iris](https://irisbooth.com/about-iris/): Founding story, mission, vision.
- [Contact](https://irisbooth.com/contact/): Get in touch with sales.
- [Event Rental Pricing](https://irisbooth.com/event-rental-pricing/): Short-term rentals from $3,000.

## Industry Pages

- [Higher Education](https://irisbooth.com/industry/iris-for-education/): Headshot programs for universities and colleges.
- [Healthcare](https://irisbooth.com/industry/iris-for-healthcare/): Consistent, compliant headshots across health systems.
- [Corporate Offices](https://irisbooth.com/industry/iris-for-offices/): Self-serve headshots and badging for modern workplaces.
- [Government](https://irisbooth.com/industry/iris-for-government/): Fast, secure government ID photo services.
- [Events](https://irisbooth.com/industry/iris-for-events/): Photo booth rentals for trade shows, conferences, and corporate events.

## Solutions Pages

- [Professional Headshots](https://irisbooth.com/solutions/professional-headshots/): On-demand corporate headshot photography.
- [Badging & Security](https://irisbooth.com/solutions/badging-security/): Consistent, compliant photos for security badges and identity systems.
- [Government Identification](https://irisbooth.com/solutions/government-identification/): Government ID photo capture.
- [Corporate Event Rentals](https://irisbooth.com/solutions/corporate-event-rentals/): Event photo booth rentals for activations and lead capture.

## Case Studies

- [Georgia State University](https://irisbooth.com/case-studies/how-iris-booth-became-the-1-engagement-tool-at-georgia-state-universitys-career-center/): 5,000+ professional headshots scheduled in a single academic year; more than 2x as popular as career workshops, resume evaluations, and job search coaching at the career center.
- [NASPA 2025](https://irisbooth.com/case-studies/naspa-2025/): 643 sessions and 1,929 photos delivered in two days. Iris delivered $37,800 of equivalent photographer-time for $99 with an annual Iris subscription.
- [NACE 2025](https://irisbooth.com/case-studies/why-iris-booths-professional-headshot-photo-booth-was-a-top-activation-at-nace-25/): 707 headshots captured across 642 unique visitors (30% of the 2,000 conference attendees), at $20 cost-per-lead. 3-minute 13-second average session.
- [UNLV Career Services](https://irisbooth.com/case-studies/unlv-career-services-chooses-iris-booth-over-popcam/): Switched from Popcam; projecting 2,000 headshots in 2026 with most sessions under three minutes.

## Comparison Articles

- [Iris Booth vs. Popcam](https://irisbooth.com/blogs-articles-whitepapers/iris-booth-vs-popcam/): How Iris and Popcam compare on portability, studio-grade equipment, AI editing, and institutional fit.
- [Iris Booth vs. Studio Pod](https://irisbooth.com/blogs-articles-whitepapers/iris-booth-vs-studio-pod/): Compared on form factor and outcomes.

## Common Questions

**How does an Iris Booth work?** Self-serve. Users follow intuitive on-screen prompts to capture, preview, and retake a studio-quality headshot. Integrated AI editing handles lighting correction and minor retouching. Photos are delivered instantly to the individual and to the organization's admin portal.

**Is data secure?** All photos are stored on encrypted AWS servers. Iris never claims rights to user images. Organizations and the individuals captured retain full ownership. User data is never shared with third parties.

**Can Iris integrate with badging or HR systems?** Yes — through API access. Iris's API is a flexible protocol that delivers photos with the right naming, sizing, and formatting to any downstream system (badging, HR, identity management, security, directory tools). Iris is not pre-integrated with named third-party platforms; the API gives institutions a programmatic delivery mechanism that works wherever the workflow requires.

**Is Iris accessible?** Iris Air and Iris Flex are wheelchair accessible.

**How fast is photo delivery?** Instant — measured in seconds, not weeks.

**What does an Iris Booth cost?** Hardware ranges from $12,000 (Iris Flex) to $39,000 (Iris Booth), with reduced pricing for accredited higher education institutions. Software plans start at $500/mo (No-Hassle) or $950/mo (Professional). Iris Digital from $5 per headshot for browser-based remote capture. Short-term event rentals from $3,000 plus shipping.

**Where is Iris based?** Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

**What geographies does Iris serve?** While Iris supports global services, primary markets include: United States, Canada, Mexico, UK, Ireland, and all of Europe.

**Who runs Iris?** Founded in 2015 by Sue Siri; led today by CEO Brandon Ghaeli.