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Passport Photos

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1538 points gaws | 5 comments | 06 Nov 24 21:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.635s | source
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rconti ◴[06 Nov 24 22:48 UTC] No.42070771[source]▶
It's a lot of "fun" trying to get acceptable photos. Last week I went to my local American Automobile Association (AAA) office to get an International Driver's Permit (IDP). It's just a translation of your license, which is valid for 1 year. I had to take 2 passport-sized photos with me, which I did.

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.

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dwroberts ◴[06 Nov 24 23:17 UTC] No.42071064[source]▶
The criteria for UK stuff is normally really clear? https://www.gov.uk/photos-for-passports

Can see how it would be annoying if they don't explain which criteria is being violated though

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1. rconti ◴[06 Nov 24 23:34 UTC] No.42071255[source]▶
Yeah, the criteria is clear, but do everything you can to meet it, and the online submission will just say the photo quality is "poor" (unlikely to be approved) and not explain what's poor about it. I spent a lot of time juggling aspects of the photo itself as well as of the scan (DPI, compression, etc) and nothing seemed to make a difference.
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2. IanCal ◴[07 Nov 24 00:53 UTC] No.42072008[source]▶
Anecdata from the other side, I've done a few passports for family now and it gives immediate ratings and we've not had any issue at all.
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3. rjh29 ◴[07 Nov 24 02:13 UTC] No.42072573[source]▶
I took a phone selfie against a white wall and it was accepted fine.
4. Macha ◴[07 Nov 24 18:55 UTC] No.42079658[source]▶
My prior passport photo was taken with the Irish Passport office's manual "send in photos and someone decides if it's good enough" process they had at the time. As I always wore glasses, I wore them in my photo too, which given they didn't obscure the face, the manual check indicated they were fine.

For my latest renewal, they've moved to an app based process which just flat out rejects any with my glasses on because the prescription is so strong it distorts the outline of my face (at least that's my best guess, as the app claims compatibility with glasses.

Anyway, since renewing the passport to one without glasses in my passport photo, I've found I much more frequently get rejected at automated passport gates, often needing to take my glasses off so I match the passport photo better.

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5. pbhjpbhj ◴[07 Nov 24 23:24 UTC] No.42082283[source]▶
Really they should probably do three photos minimum, looking 45 deg right, then left, then straight on, they could add a with/without glasses (or anything else you'd normally wear, facial jewelry perhaps).