Help...Passport photos........

<p>Although I am not a professional photographer, but WE are Leica and other camera owners. We have taken hundreds and thousands of photos and yet we cannot take a passport photo, I felt so beat up...

Sandy,

 

I'm from India living in the US - and Sreenivas is probably one of the most common names in India.

 

And yes I agree - we with expensive camera equipment should be able to take a "mere" passport photo - not the most technically challenging task.

 

Cheers,

Sreenivas

Can you smile? Smiling is prohibited for Canadian passport photos.

Eighteen or so years ago, an aunt asked me to take a photograph for the fresh passport for which she was to apply. I asked a studio boy about background and he said white. When the prints were done, I bumped into a friend in the foreign service, who told me that the background wanted had changed to dark grey. More frames exposed, more prints made. All until then was black and white. My aunt put off applying for perhaps three months -- and then I had to do a third round because the passport office had decided that it wanted photographs in colour. I have forgotten what was the background: candy stripes, for all I know or care.

Sandy, there are plenty of places that do passport photos and are set up to take the photos to the specifications required for passports. It's a business. You can find them in the yellow pages or by internet search engine. You don't have to worry about doing it yourself and not having it conform to the required specifications.

 

It's always a good idea to have a passport, as it is one of the most universally accepted forms of identification. In fact, very soon it will no longer be possible to travel to Puerto Rico and the Carribean with just a birth certificate and driver's license, they will be requiring passports.