Passport Question

[aidensmom73]

When renewing a passport, can you send in a photo you took at home or does it have to be a photo CVS, Rite Etc. that sell the service where you go and stand in fron tof the white background?

 

[pr surfer]

as long as it fits the state dept. requirements, (well lit, natural facial expression, no shadows, white bg) you can take them yourself.

on travel.state.gov they have a guide for photographers that will tell their requirements.

 

[Castlebound]

The government has requirements for the photos. They are pretty strict with their requirements. My dad got his passport photo done at the photo place in Wal-Mart. They had to retake his photo three times before it was accepted. It is about $9-$20 to get a passport photo around here, and they have to retake the photo for free if it is rejected.

 

[Geoff_M]

You can take them yourself. I took our daughter's photo, printed at home on my printer, and sent it in with no problems. As long as it meets the requirements, "homemade" is fine.

 

[freckles and boo]

You can do it yourself. It is a pain in the fanny to get the proportions just right, but it is do-able. It depends on what is worth more, your time or your money.

 

[DebbieB]

I got mine done at AAA for about $8.00.

 

[clgwli]

It can be a pain to do them yourself. We went to AAA for mine. My husband had a photographer at work who was used to doing passport pictures and he got his done there with a regular camera and printed off at his workplace.. My aunt did it at home and they tried three times before giving up and going elsewhere to get the photo done.

 

[NotUrsula]

There is a service called epassportphoto.com that will size the digital photo you take, then you can take the file to one of those u-print-it machines at WalMart or Walgreens, etc. to print it.

If you're a bit more ambitious you can also do it yourself completely at home using a free photo editing program called GIMP. You can download that from www.gimp.org

 

[christinou]

You can do it yourself, just take the picture against a white wall, do not smile and then crop the picture to the right dimension, we have never had a problem.

 

[DancingBear]

why not smile?

 

[pr surfer]

why not smile?

it requires a voluntary motion to do that, and is not your natural, idle face.

 

[DancingBear]

Just googled this. I had no idea that they had banned smiling (at least with teeth showing). Apparently is has to do with biometric matching machines. (So I guess if you are a terrorist keep smiling all of the time and the biometric machines won't catch you).

 

[4nana]

To me it's not worth the hassle or taking any chances, we just did ours at Rite Aid for $7.99pp.