I was expecting some kind of article about an issue with passport photos or some kind of exploit, maybe photoshopping so it looks like the person but fools automatic facial recognition...
but was pleasantly surprised instead.
> Yes. Make sure your eyes are open and your mouth is closed in your photo.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-app...
> Pose and Expression: Have a neutral facial expression with both eyes open and mouth closed.
In my view, neutral and smiling are incompatible, but I guess that is up to interpretation.
But I was told they wouldn't be accepted because I had long hair and a beard in them, but short hair and no beard now. That's absurd, because it's the same photo used in both of my passports, and there's no requirement that you don't alter your appearance from your passport photo. Somehow border guards can crack the code.
Amusingly, my California driver's license shows short hair and no beard, but the AAA person wasn't even looking at my CA license at the time. What happens if I grow long hair and a beard before I travel? Was he just trying to upsell me on a $9.99 photo?
We had a hell of a time getting the UK passport authorities to accept the photos we sent in for her passport; they recommend getting your photos taken at an "official" UK location where the digital photos are identified by a code you send in. Well, we happened to be traveling through Australia during this timeframe, so we were able to stop at an Australian Post Office, which supposedly had the same "digital" system, but instead of a code to send to the UK authorities, they handed us printed photos and a web link. Thankfully I was able to use the web link to download the photo and upload it to the UK site, where it was approved almost immediately, and the new passport arrived back at our home before we returned from our trip. But there's no user-obvious criteria that was being used to reject the SEVERAL rounds of photos we had sent to the UK earlier.
yeah, and I would have expected nothing less. from my personal experience, the photos were required to be recent. just based on your having visited a barber would signal to me that the photos were not recent. even if you visited the barber while you waited for the 1-Hour Photo guy to finish, a logical person would realize this was not going to work out well
Huh. Last time I got an IDP from AAA, I don't think the lady behind the desk even really looked at the photo. She just took my $20, copied the info from my app to my permit, stapled one of the photos to the permit, and handed it to me. It was like less than three minutes total.
Regardless, the photos are recent (<1yr) and my driver's license has a 5 year validity and passports 10 year validity. As an illogical person, I sometimes change my appearance over a given 10 year span.
When I renew my US passport by mail, they don't actually know what I look like at the time of the renewal.
What does 'recent' mean, since you have already acknowledged that temporal recency is irrelevant? When am I traveling? What's accurate to my current appearance? What if I started a cancer treatment that renders me unable to grow a beard?
Your flippant reply ignores reality, and these aren't even edge cases.
Can see how it would be annoying if they don't explain which criteria is being violated though
Tell them your religion doesn't permit beardless photos, so you grew one for the photo.
When they ask what religion, pick one with beards.
It's AAA, not the police -- the person behind the desk will shrug, now with a reason not to care, and create your IDP.
The frequency of your grooming habits AFTER receiving a passport are irrelevant to the actual approval of a passport. This doesn't need to be hard.
you're applying for a new passport. to be shocked that at a minimum the pictures would look like you at the time of the application is pretty...I don't even know what word to use here. there's a way to make dealing with gov't agencies simple and as painless as possible, and then there's this.
I wrote this: https://github.com/jftuga/photo_id_resizer
This program is used to resize large photo ID images. When image resizing occurs, a content aware image resizing library is used with its face detection algorithm to avoid face deformation.If you'll re-read more closely, you'll see that I was not applying for a new passport. I also wasn't working with a government agency.
By the way, it was simple and painless. I was told to bring photos if I had them; otherwise they could be done on-site for $9.99. I opened up my desk drawer on my way out of the house, and I happened to have photos. So I brought photos. I was told they were not acceptable, so I accepted the offer of an on-site photo, which took about 90 seconds, paid my fee, and went on my way. There was nothing difficult about it. I would not have saved myself any hassle had I left the photos in my drawer.
It's unclear to me why you have gone out of your way to misunderstand or misinterpret the situation, other than in a misguided attempt to be antagonistic, but it's not working.
I had a similar experience with getting UK photos at a chemist, they said they could do digital photos and didn’t. So I went to the Photo Warehouse and it was smooth sailing. I guess the specialist photo outfits are more likely to know what they’re doing.
In my case, whatever detection software they used seemed to think my eyes were closed, which they were not.
I just used a normal picture taken on a phone, against a plain white wall, accepted with no issues.
I think it cost something like $0.68 for 2 photos, each of which had all four of our photos plus 2 extra spots.