Wtf is it with passport photos I look like I m on the wanted list

[pippapipps]

Just spent half an hour trying to get a good passport photo to upload and every one of them I look like an angry collapsed face criminal
I just wanted a decent photo for once my passport photos always show the worst of me I just can't do straight face photos.. give up I'm pissed off now and will have to upload another shit photo
Anyone else

Yeah it’s weird isn’t it? I think it’s because you have to deliberately not smile so you end up looking really angry and tense.

I look like bloody Michael Myers in mine, as if I’m just about to be transferred to a psych ward.

Country I’m from originally didn’t allow make up on official document photos, not even concealer ! Dreadful! Thank God not same rules here 😂

I look like a fat man. I had to sweep the fringe off my face so I dont look like me, take my glasses off, so I dont look like me, then I couldnt see the screen so wasnt sure what I looked like or whether my head was in the circle bit so I had to take the best that came. Which is awful.

I look like someone discovered floating face up and bloated in a canal by an unfortunate dog walker.

🤣🤣🤣

I think it's to do with the photo guidelines; not being allowed to smile. The demand to have a straight face, and then the awareness that you can't smile makes you try even harder to not smile, so the end result just looks weird.

I'm looking up on mine- I didn't check the photo before printing and had no more cash/card on me and had to get it as we had a holiday booked. Thought they were going to reject it- I wish they had! A friend who verified it actually text me and said 'this isn't you!' 🤣

Winning so far😆

Glasses are a major issue. So I took them off for the photo, get to the automatic gates, take them off to match, and can't see what I need to do. I wear them all the hours I'm awake, let me have them in my photo. Also, it might solve the vanishing nose issue as they'd have to be resting on something.

Ds's photo kept getting rejected online so I had to put a note on to say no he really is this pale with translucent skin and light blonde hair. He gets it from me so for my photo knowing I would face the same issue I slapped on fake tan and a lot of bronzer and basically tanned myself so I wouldn't look like a ghost.

Because we take our own photos we take about 20 and find the "best" one and go into the editing mode on the phone to give it a little umph. Then Google photos decides to make a little montage of dour faced menopausal woman just looking sad because I didn't delete them out of my photos. I kept it because it made me laugh so much.

I leave mine on which is why the immigration gate doesnt let me through!!

I look like Miss Trunchbull on mine, DH looks like a Russian spy. 😂

passport booths do that to everyone! I do my own against a white wall now, and try and look my best.

My passport photo looks like I've just been arrested for some despicable crime, and bizarrely my driving license photo looks like an entirely different person - who has just been arrested for some despicable crime. I'm forced to conclude this might be how I actually appear to people.

Same here. I need to renew mine very soon as its about to go past its 10 year limit so useless for EU entry so I need to go through the photo trauma again.

Apparently I've aged about 40 years in the last 10 so passport officers had almost stopped believing that the pretty young thing in my current passport is me anyway.

DP has just done his and I took a lovely photo of him that could have been used for a line up of serial killers.

Does anyone remember David Cameron was once described as having a face like a freshly wanked cock?

I saw my old boss's passport photo once. It was like that. (He wasn't David Cameron).

My people!
yes I look utterly utterly ragingly furious on mine, like a “taken moments before she murdered” photo
DH reckons it’s more along the lines of Russian assassin, due to the trench coat shoulders and hooped earrings combo
oddly enough, the best EVER passport photo I had was the one before this one, I was dreading it as had to get it from the booth at the passport office, during Covid, for emergency travel (whole other thread)
id been crying for days, had eyes like Kermit the frog in real life….photo was incredible though, I was genuinely sad to see that one go

Many years ago, when I was still in my 20s actually, the woman at immigration in Male airport took my passport from me, opened it up, looked at the photo, looked at me, looked at the photo, held up the passport with the photo facing me, pointed at the photo, laughed and told me “you look like a man”.

The sad truth is, she wasn’t wrong. What was a winsome pixie cut IRL photographed as a butch prison-cut by a one-eyed, one-armed barber on probation.

I look like an extra from The Walking Dead.

My late DH was a very good looking bloke but on his passport photo he looked like Reggie Kray (if anyone's old enough to remember the Kray twins!). He was honestly the spitting image of him.

I look like a right miserable cow who doesn't want to go on holiday....far from it tomorrow morning as I'm boarding that 7.00 flight !

I make the same mistake every time, which is to use a photo booth in a supermarket. Lighting from above does nobody any favours; for me it emphasises my sagging jowls. The previous passport’s photo was weirdly stretched during the printing process which left me looking like the moon, per a PP. Awful.

Just looked at it again and noticed that the security markings make it look like I have a spiv’s moustache and a musketeer’s goatee. FML

I had very short hair in my early 20s. It was longer again a year later, but I had my passport at that point. The photo was ok (we could smile then), but the hologram was around my chin so gave me a beard. This was more pronounced if the passport was photocopied, which had to happen multiple times for work. I looked like a 12 year old boy with a beard.

When I start looking like my passport photo, I know its time to go home ...