Passport photos can be submitted electronically. There is no need for a physical paper photo. Before they accepted digital photos, you could go to Walmart or a lot of other local stores and have your photo taken and printed out exactly in the size and shape required for passport use.
Drivers license photos are taken at the DMV. You cannot supply your own photos. The DMV keeps a copy of your photo on their computers.
Work ID photos are typically done in the same manner is drivers license photos. You sit in front of a machine, they take your picture, and your entire ID is printed out with your picture already on it. Your face is stored digitally on a computer somewhere.
Ah. I wondered if that might be the case - so that’s a big chunk of your booth revenue gone right there.
(Had to google Kinko’s) - a major post office will provide that sort of service over here but you still have to rock up with your photos. Again, in the US, booth business lost. I see the difference more clearly now. Thanks.
…But yeah, the primary use for them over here is strictly business. There are specific size requirements for passport (etc) photos, that these booths cater for. (I think you’re supposed to use your smartphone for fun).
The boardwalk in Shreveport has one. We put the grandkids in one. (There were fewer of them then)
It was like $7 a pop.
I have the strip somewhere. The littlest at the time was whacking his brother in one.
Seems like I remember Chucky Cheese had one.
I did it during highschool years, a time or two. Substantially cheaper if I remember.
Y’know, on thinking about it, the ones over here just might have been the right specs for passport photos… but they were just never marketed that way. You’d find photo booths in fun places with fun-looking signs and the outside covered with sample pictures of people having fun. I wouldn’t be surprised if some “life hacks” list from back in the day might have suggested using one for a cheap passport photo (except they weren’t called “life hacks” back then, and such lists weren’t spread nearly as widely before the Internet).
Yeah, both those are really common at the weddings I photograph. I personally don’t deal with the photo booth side of things, but there are some photographers who have it as add-ons to their packages, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some deejays do as well. It’s a quick way to make a few hundred extra bucks on top of your contract. But I also see a lot of stand-alone companies who do photo booths, and they range from the traditional type, to make-shift types with curtain rods and curtains all around (instead of a solid framework – makes it easier to put up and take down), to the open style you mention with everything from a plain wall backdrop to a green screen (as you noted).
The video ones you mention (I’ve heard them called “360 photo booths”) started becoming popular here maybe 4 or 5 years ago? I still see those not too uncommonly. There was a time I saw animated GIF photo booths, but it’s been awhile.
For the traditional ones, I still see them at museums, zoos, (basically any type of tourist attraction), sometimes in the occasional bar, I’m guessing the mall (and people still seem to go to malls around here, though not in the numbers like back in the 80s). I’ve never particularly connected them with women – pretty much all the photo booth shots I’ve taken in the last 10 years were with me and my little kids – I don’t think my wife partook in the experience.
That might depend on how old you are. When I was kid photo booths were in fun places - but they were also in Woolworths and every other five and dime store. Those ones didn’t have the samples of people having fun and I think they did make reference to photos for passports and other government uses. Nowadays , you can go to Staples/Kinkos/CVS to get passport-sized photos and a person takes the photo , but back then you went to Woolworths/ McCrorys and used the photo booth.
My vague memory is that they has verbiage on the side that referenced passport photos but most people went to a brick and mortar store to get them where an employee had a special camera that took two pictures at once and was trained to properly frame them.
I think my husband had the same sweater - or something quite similar.
Same in Switzerland. Because the US passport photo requirements are different, I went to a photographer to get that done. The photo booth photos are only useful for my train pass.
I’ve also seen something similar at a club, and that included the logo of the band.
To add another data point from across the pond, back when there were still photo booths in Germany (haven’t seen any for a long time), they primarily were intended for passport photos and advertised as that. Of course soon people used it for fun shots, mostly loving couples like in the beautiful examples posted in this thread, and the advertising expanded (sample fun shots were displayed on the outside). But since the advent of much more forgery-proof passports, the photos must observe very strict biometrical restrictions, and only photos from professional photographers or ones being taken directly at the passport office are accepted. For other ID, e. g. for my health insurance card, I’m able to provide a self-taken digital photo online.
Whoa, is this new? I renewed my passport in 2020 and either they didn’t have that option then, or I missed it and wasted twenty bucks getting a passport photo taken at a UPS Store.
Like vinyl, I think too much new technology would actually make them less appealing (but could be wrong, too much like a phone). Adding cheap props and booze might be a winning combination, though.
Thanks, QtM, for sharing such precious photos. ”Pour longtemps je t’aimais”…
AFAIK they have largely disappeared around here (and I rarely used them). Most passport places charge twenty bucks, require a stamped and signed photo (definitely not digital), but meet the odd and stringent Canadian requirements of no smiling, excessive glare, dimensions and lighting. Still, I used a photo booth the first time I got a passport before shoebombers screwed up travel for everybody…
As to strictly passport pix, others have talked about using e-pix.
There’s also the fact that less than half of Americans even have a passport. More Americans don’t have passports than every single human in Germany & France combined. Plus half of Italy.
Collectively speaking, we are not big on international travel. Another way the USA is speshul, and in a way we should not be proud of, but too many of us are. Idjits.
Our department Christmas party had a photo booth one year. It was a few years before I retired, so, maybe 15 years ago? It was popular with both genders. The lines were always too long, so I didn’t bother.
They’re still in every Woolworths and other five and dime store . And the fact that you even mentioned such pretty much proves that you’re older than me.
Eh, most Europeans probably only travel about as much as most Americans. It’s just that, here, when you travel clear across the continent, you’re still in the same country.
I never used a photo booth snap for a passport itself, but when I traveled to Egypt in 1984, they required two passport-sized photos along with the application for a visa. So off to Woolworth’s I went.
That’s because in the US you don’t walk into a different nation every three steps. (And traveling to other nations except for Canada and Mexico is a hell of a lot more expensive than it is to move about amongst postage stamps. Travelling internationally is something that millions of Americans can only dream about maybe being able to afford to do once someday.)
. And the fact that you even mentioned such pretty much proves that you’re older than me.