I just paid £17 to have my passport photo taken and it is NOT MY FACE

[HarrietKettle]

I mean, I suppose it must be.

I look like I've just been arrested for drink driving offences, under the influence, and it's 4am in a downtown NY drunk-tank.

This is going on my ZSL pass for my charges and I to visit the zoo (I'm a nanny) so not ideal.

I applied make up. I brushed my hair. I wore a jaunty shade. I skipped along to Snappy-Fucking-Snaps on Charlotte Steet, London as I thought they'd take a nicer photo than my local one in Acton.

The lady asked me which one I wanted, they were all shite but one didn't make me want to cut my head off, I said that one please, she robbed me of my £17.99 and I said I'd pop back in half an hour.

I SWEAR TO GOD SHE SWITCHED THEM to the worst photo of my face I e ever seen. I look awful, I have never looked so awful, and if that is honestly my face I'm cancelling the extortionate wedding photographer we've selected and having my one year old nephew take the pics, at least he's likely to chop out my head.

I now have to present a picture of me looking like a criminal with addiction problems to my new boss for the ZSL card, and I'll have 7 monstrosities left that will never see the light of any day.

I looked fine in the mirror beforehand. Fine.

My fiancé says I'm like a slightly less Chanel-ed version of Natalie Portman (we've had his eyes tested and they're grand but I know he's slightly biased) so WHAT THE FUCK happened. The image is seared on to my brain forever. And the godforsaken ZSL card.

Anyone else look shite when they thought they looked ok?

DISCLAIMER LIGHTHEARTED I know I'm lucky to have a face etc etc

Three? THREE? The last time I had to get a passport renewal, dh took FORTY three pictures. By the end of it I was a panic stricken sweaty mess. I have giant 80s hair - frizzy. It just does it's own thang. I have about four chins, depending on the angle. My RBF is legendary (dsis's Xh called me 'po-faced lemon-sucker' for years). After forty three pics I basically just ran for the hills and told dh to just pick the least offensive.
Reader, they returned it.
They returned it.
I. Had. To. Do. It. Again.
Mortifying.
My entire family still laugh about 'that time that mummy's picture got refused' when their shiny new passports just plopped on the doormat, and I got the letter of shame.

I look like an overweight axe murderer in mine! (I am neither)

I look awful in most photos but made the mistake of going to get my driving licence renewed on my motorbike. My hair was tied up and the woman at the desk took it before I was ready. I look awful kind of like the serial killer Aileen Wuornos. I. Giving this horrible scowl like I'm going to kill someone. Most of my usual photos I look like a rabbit in headlights.

This thread has had me in stitches.
On my last passport the photo of me resembled a early 1980's apprehended escapee from East Germany. Who is about to be tortured interviewed by the Stasi. It doesn't help that my surname is actually from the land of the Wurst .
My late ex DH used to whisper "schnell!" (translation -quickly) to make me laugh whenever we were approaching passport control. So I not only looked like someone evading border checks, I had the demeanour in rl of someone who is taking the piss out of the gun toting officials and their immigration laws .
Never have I been so glad to apply for a new passport. Until it arrived. I now look like the grandmother of an East German illegal border crosser.
What gives, passport photo gods? The wall came down 20 years ago!

You lot should stop complaining and start to feel sorry for all the poor people who work in the passport office 😂😆

Nobody's passport photo ever looks good. My good looking (and I'm not being a biased mum - he really is good looking) looks like a terrorist in his. I'm not even going to describe mine!!!!

I haven't managed to read all these, but I will after work!!

You lot always make me feel so much better. My last two passport photos were brilliant, I looked young and vibrant and fab. The one I have just had done however, has made me look about 60, with jaundice. Also Ive never looked so miserable in my life. I swear if I go on holiday, I'll be stopped for fraud/identity theft, for not matching the photo!

I'm lucky that my passport photos have been ok. I go to the local photographers who have a perfect set up. I'm dreading the day they retire...
My Costco membership photo is another thing entirely. It's horrendous. How on earth on such a small photo have they made me look like a squat hunchback crossed with Shrek ?

...even when I've let my membership lapse so that I can reapply and get a new photo, they've replicated the awful photo

Absolutely PMSL at this thread.

Am also a victim of Charlotte Street Snappy Snaps. My old driving licence photo looked like it had been taken in a hall of mirrors. My forehead had narrowed mysteriously whereas my neck had ballooned. The overall effect was of a fat girl with mumps.

My current passport photo looks like someone has just poked a stick up my arse. Even the bloke in the post office pulled a replica face when he saw it. I'd had three lots of photos done and it was the best of a bad bunch.

When I was younger I had a fantastic passport photo. It was singularly the best photo I'd ever had taken. I went after a long journey (and camping out overnight) to reception of the place I was staying to change some money. The bloke took one look at my photo and said that's obviously the other girl (meaning my friend who I was travelling with). I thought I must have picked my friends passport up by accident but when I checked it was mine. I was unrecognisable to my passport photo as it was so good I never looked like it again. Was gutted when it ran out and was replaced with the usual shite photo

The camera always makes me look twenty years older than I am. It gives me lines that I didn’t know I had and makes other nasty alterations to my face. It must be modern cameras because I looked good forty years ago! Seriously, those photo booths are lethal unless you look like Angelina Jolie.

Currently in Australia on holiday. On arrival, the immigration lady kept looking at me, looking at the photo, looking at me, looking at the photo...the rest of the family just got a cursory look over. The cowbag then said 'it's amazing what a 24 hour flight does to some people' I obviously laughed along desperately so that she let me into the country with aforementioned family but am still huffy about it. OH thinks it's hilarious. The worst part of it is that my passport photo isn't even very good to begin with. I must've looked SHOCKING. To be fair, the 1 year old refused to sleep apart from an hour, on me, the entire way.

In general I do not photograph well. I always think of that episode of How I Met Your Mother when they try desperately to get a bad photo of Barney but whatever they do he looks amazing. I am the complete opposite. No matter how good I look posing for the photo I seem to have my eyes shut and my mouth is arranged at an unnatural angle that makes me look very very odd. I really don't think I look that odd in real life, I am a very normal person!

Oh god and don't even start me on Costco photos. Utterly horrific. It's like it's the price you pay for all that cut price wonder that goes on behind the hallowed doors...

I had to renew my passport 10 days after giving birth to DS. The comment back from DH was 'you look like you've been taken hostage somewhere in the Far East and don't think anyone is going to pay the ransom.' Cheers love.

Mine you, DS looked like a tiny, very fat Russian mobster.

I just had to hastily renew my passport as I’d booked everything for a holiday in May in my married name and my passport is still in my maiden name

Anyway, thinking there was a huge rush I ran into the shop where they take the photos, in the midst of a snowstorm during the reign of the beast from the east and got my picture taken.

Well I was quite aware these weren’t the most flattering pictures every, my hair was a bit wild, covered in snow and wind blown, the lighting had given me a slightly ex heroin addict grey skinned, dark eyed look and I have a grumpy looking face at the best of times but when told not to smile..............

However I didn’t think it was THAT bad until I got home my children told me I looked like Severous Snape

Well the late Alan Rickman is not going to allow any of these children to have fun on said holiday!!!!

Just remembered that DP also had to get new ID pics recently. He went to our local, independent high-street photographer who we've both known for years and trust his pics.

DP looks like an old and extremely grumpy version of David Jason.

Now, I like David Jason ... but he and DP look nothing like each other

I once had a passport application rejected because my face was too pale! Well, they said there was ‘insufficient contrast between my face and the background colour’. The background colour was arctic white. I was floored and just had to put orangey make up on and try again!

Oh god I look like the dog from the Churchill ad. All jowls. And it looks like my face is sliding into itself. And the photographer airbrushed some bits out. I must take a shite picture. Even doing a selfie I look demented or angry, or bald. The camera hates me.

Oh god I look like the dog from the Churchill ad. All jowls. And it looks like my face is sliding into itself. And the photographer airbrushed some bits out. I must take a shite picture. Even doing a selfie I look demented or angry, or bald. The camera hates me.

wearing Osama Bin Laden’s beard

My passport in my 20s had me looking 10 years younger. My passport in my 30s has me looking 10 years older. Not fair! When I had youth on my side I didn't need to be made to look like I should be travelling with a responsible adult

I have RTFT but didn't see a mention to this www.paspic.com/ - you can get the photo taken in the comfort of your own home, upload it to this site and they print and send it to you, once they've said the photo is acceptable to Passport control.

Used it for the kids, they don't look too dreadful. I mean, a bit grim but that's surely a given.

I have no doubt I'll still look like some weird beige dead-eyed space slug but at least you don't have to pay loads in a photo booth, or face the shame of getting a stranger to take the photo in a shop.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=rlYMID5qCdE

When you arrive in the States the immigration/passport people take your photo. One time I arrived at what for me was something like 3am, and when the guy saw my photo on his screen he actually started laughing. Annoyingly I couldn't see what he was seeing, but I'm guessing it was up to my usual high standards of unphotogenic-ness. I glared at him, he kept giggling. Bastard.