Taking your own passport photos?

[QueenIsabella]

We have a passport office at the local college, literally 2 miles from home. They handle the whole shebang, including photos, at one time. They even give you an extra photo--that can come in handy if you lose your passport and need a new one ASAP. It might be a tad cheaper to go elsewhere, but this is so no-fuss, no-muss, it's worth an extra couple bucks.

I've found the post office to be hit or miss. We had no issues at our post office at our last house, but where we live now, the post offices that do passports are a total nightmare to use--for anything! Luckily, there's a post office in a nearby store that's fabulous for most things, but they don't do passports.

 

[Tuffcookie]

When we first did it and went to the post office, that lady said our pictures don't match the sizing requirements. I made her get out her little template to show me what was off and I was perfectly on.

The lady at the post office gave me one of their templates as a gift!

 

[bcla]

Well - we had to do this for a rush passport since my wife planned this trip last minute to visit a friend living overseas for maybe a week. So we got there late for our appointment at the San Francisco office, but there were a lot of people and it was more or less like waiting at the DMV. We were told to provide two photos, although the instructions say one. The color/background was apparently OK, but the employee said there could be a problem because my kid was looking down a little bit. Parking wasn't too bad although I parked in a free space a few blocks away where it was street sweeping hours starting at noon; got back about 10 minutes before that time and most of the cars were gone.

I don't really anticipate they'll reject the photo because my kid's head is barely looking down. I remember back when glasses were OK, I used the trick that they recommended to reduce flash glare, which was to look down.

We didn't have the passport in hand. It will be available late tomorrow, and we had to ask for a faster time because the employee was saying two days at the end of the day. I guess my wife will pick it up Friday and take it to the consulate for the visa that's needed. We had all day in San Francisco, so we went to that consulate to ask about a visa even though we didn't have a passport. The strange thing is that they had two automated photo booths there to make passport/visa photos that specifically meet that country's standards. I think it was maybe $10. I remember being there before, and they used to have the employee at the info desk do that. We showed the photos we took, and the consulate employee said they were fine as well as asking some more specific questions. My wife especially wanted to ask a bunch of stuff, such as whether or not we needed to fill in sections that seemed irrelevant. The application is for all visa classes, and some of them include classes that require a sponsor.