Daisy is five now so it’s time to renew her passports. Probably a good thing. As you can see from the pic she’s changed a bit from when she was six weeks old.
It was a palaver getting the photos though. Last time Daisy could use the same photo for both passports. Now the Aussies and the Brits insist on different dimensions and different backgrounds. The Aussies like your face to fill up more of the frame with a white background. The Brits prefer a grey backdrop (insert your weather related jokes here) and for you to stand a little further back, if you don’t mind.
The Brits and the Aussies have one thing in common though. If you don’t get the photo exactly right they’ll reject it out of hand.
Which got me thinking. With the advent of biometric passports and this insistence on perfectly-lit, perfectly-fit images, is this the end of the really bad passport photo?
It wasn’t that long ago that passport offices would accept any old photo, as long as it was roughly the right size and bore a passing resemblance to the person presenting it. They were flexible on that too though, especially if it was close to lunchtime. And because people inevitably leave getting the photo done until the last moment – usually on the way to the passport office – they always looked rushed and flustered.
Badly cropped, badly lit, badly dressed – it didn’t matter. And as a result backpackers the world over enjoyed drunken nights roaring with laughter as they compared their passports. I know that my third passport, the one where I had a mullet, bought joy to all corners of the globe.
The worst passport photo I saw belonged to an English girl called Gemma. It was so overexposed that her eyes were the only part of her face clearly visible. It had been featured on the bad passport photo section of the English TV show Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush. And yet she’d just spent six months travelling throughout Asia using it.
Of course, the occasional fashion faux pas and bad haircut will still slip through. No amount of professional lighting can totally counter bad taste.
But I can’t help but think an era has passed.
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Funny, how some countries can be so strict about the photos while others pay little attention to them. If I recall rightly, did you not tell the story in “Wrong Way Home” of a guy you travelled with whose passport fell apart but still got him into Afghanistan despite having been repaired using someone else’s photo?
Hi Simon – that was mate mate Keith, the Tasmanian guy I travelled into Afghanistan with. And it was my photo he used!
Basically we needed photos to get a Pakistani visa. He didn’t have any. I had two lots. One with my hair out (I had long hair back then) One with my hair pulled back.
He used the one of me with my hair pulled back.
I used the other.
We both got our visa!
I’ve just been doing them for my teenage daughters. I had to shoot about 40 frames for them to choose one from and there was a lot of photoshop work on some stubborn spots required.
Hehe, she looked more like you when she was a baby! Passport photos are unbelievable. You’re not even allowed to smile in them now:(
I recall several drunken nights in hostels spent laughing at other peoples’ passport photos. Mine was (and still is) pretty bad too if truth be told.
Worse still is the photo for my driving licence – the ****ing DVLA cut off my chin!
With the news of body scanners being phased in at UK airports perhaps the day will come when we need a full body photo as our passport photo…. if they insist on this being done in just undies I believe this could finally reduce people travelling abroad and help global warming
Thanks Mike W – Just had a horrible vision of backpackers sitting around comparing those photos!
I have recently renewed my passport and the photo has me with fairly long hair. Before I go traveling I’m thinking of getting it cut shorter to make it more manageable when I’m on the road. I plan to travel to to the US, does anyone think this will be an issue entering the US?