Passport Photos Are A Total Ripoff

As part of my packing list for Peace Corps, I gotta bring 12 passport-sized photos. If you've gone to get a passport in the last 10 years, you'll know that "professional" photographers will swindle you for at least $10 - $15 for every two pictures. Considering that one can print digital pictures at WalMart or Target for 9 -15 cents per, this is the biggest scam since bottled water. For any future Peace Corps volunteers out there that happen upon this, I'm going to briefly describe what I did to avoid such banditry. I enlisted the help of my sister Emily as my professional photographer. Please note that you will have to find your own Emily. She found a white wall in her apartment, we cleared some stuff outta the way, moved a couple lights over to avoid any shadows, and then she took several pics at different distances. One has to make sure the measurements are all ok (i.e., distance from chin to top of hair... err, head in my case; distance from bottom of photo to eye level) and that your picture is taken straight on at eye level, but this is all laid out here: http://travel.state.gov/passport/guide/guide_2081.html





This is the result of our 3 minutes of hard work and $1.08:

Stunning, eh?




As a followup, you can also get the same result, even easier, by taking a decent pic and heading over to http://www.epassportphoto.com/ Thanks for the heads up, Shelly!