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

God, this thread is cracking me up!

And it made me remember an article in the news about a chap who'd complained to HM Passport office after they issued this of him

Omg Delta that's hilarious

I can thank my most recent passport photo for pointing out to me that the decade between mid-thirties and mid- forties had morphed me from bright eyed and adequately groomed into Norma Batty's scowling, bag-snatcher gran. I actually recoil a bit when I catch sight of the photo (did someone sneakily spray my head with sugar water and carry out a vicious back comb? Because I've never actually seen my hair - or anyone's hair for that matter - sport that style voluntarily). Dc helpfully comment on what a good likeness it is.

Is £17.99 the going rate in London? I paid about £7.99 to have mine done at Max Speilman, just so I could get another set done for free if they didn't pass muster.

To be fair, they are absolutely shocking photos and I look dreadful. My boss countersigned them, and he said oh dear "ISpent.. " When the passport came back the didn't look too bad, perhaps they run them through photoshop! xxx

booths at least you see and can retry if it's a professional you have no idea and its awkward even if they showed you the different snaps.

Just be glad your eyes are pointing in the same direction.
I have a very minor squint in my left eye. It just means that my left eye is slower than my right. I was looking at the little screen in the booth that tells you what to do, then looked across when it was the right time to take the picture…
Totally boss eyed. Had a few goes, thought I'd got it right. It prints the bloody boss eyed one!

My dad always looks like a terrorist. I remember him having one taken when you were still allowed coloured backgrounds. He chose orange and it made his skin look green.

This thread has had me in hysterics, every time I go out thinking I look good I take a picture and get a fright! How can a photo be so different to looking in the mirror where you think you look half decent.

Every. Single. Time iIve had the miserable, soul destroying experience of having to present my driving licence, every single time I've got the 'huh, is this you....
[lots] to get over the shame.

I used to take passport photos in my part time job when I was 17 and I can confirm that 99.99% of people look like criminals in their photos.

For my last one I also did my hair and make up nicely and still looked like a criminal.

I must buck the trend here and confess that I look great in passport photos, from a booth anyway. Having time to arrange my features and being able to see what I’m going to look like means I look alright. I look bloody awful in normal photos, being pinky pale like a piglet with very light features and a chubby face. —mm, sexy—

The worst thing is that in ten years time you will wish you still looked like the photo you hate so much now op.

Had mine done the other day. Hair all smooth and shiny, full face of slap, felt really pleased with myself. Had 6 attempts at the Photo-Me machine as the first one wouldn’t take my fiver but ate the pound. They were all horrific; grey, asymmetrical death mask with deep crevasses and huge jowls, no lips and eyes like piss-holes in the snow. Nightmare.

I find that the mirrors at work are similar to passport photos. I leave home looking quite presentable, arrive at work , look in the mirror and it looks like I need more medical attention than my patients , in fact I've seen patients pronounced dead looking better than I do !

My previous passport photo was so hideous that when I renewed it and used the post office check and send service they thought it was hilarious. And then told me I needed to go and get it signed and verified by someone that It was actually me as they thought the passport office would reject it!!

In the plus side they told me I looked much better and younger now (15 years on that can’t be a bad thing )

Why didn't you just go to a normal photo booth for £5 or £6 (last time I checked)?

I have also been affected by this. I wore full makeup for my last set of passport pics, figuring that I should look my 32-year old best for when my next passport renewal comes around when I’m 42.

I look like a child’s applied my lipstick. The eye bags are breathtaking. My hair is... flat on top but also frizzy? They’re awful. I will definitely look better at 42.

I love my passport and DL photo.....but I have done my time looking awful. First passport photo was Myra Hindley does Gloria Hunniford scarily star-ey, pale and an eighties blonde do so bouffant I wanted to cry......so I was determined to get a decent pic for the next one

You have to practise practise practise....so that a neutral, non resting bitch face falls upon you if anyone within 200 yards so much as opens the camera app on their phone ...think Pavlov'sDogs!
Really concentrate on how your face feels in a good photo and how to replicate it at will.

And then you need to google and learn that slightly chin jutting posture to avoid double chinnage, combine that with shoulders down and back and a very very small imperceptible turn to your best side.

and then go to a photo booth with a cornflake box, opened out and layered over with tin foil to set on your lap to avoid nasty harsh shadows.

and alllll will be well!!!

When I got my passport pics done, my husband saw them and said "Who the fuck's that?" He was deadly serious. But thank God because if he had recognised that voodoo mask as me, I'd be having plastic surgery.

I am temping until I start my new job user and I was too lazy to walk to Piccadilly Circus in my break where google said there might be a photo-booth.

I am a fool to myself

Dh's previous driving licence photo was odd. It looked like they'd stretched it to fit it in the space. He looked all lantern jawed!
Didn't look a bit like him.
Had to supply a head shot to ds2's preschool. I spent ages looking through my photos to find one where he had s nice smile and not his usual manic rictus.
I found one and happily handed it over. Later, I was looking at it again on my phone and realised that it was a picture of him crouched on the grass in the garden and that day he'd got his trousers wet so I'd taken them off and he was posing in his pants.
Whoops. They cropped it down though.

@Crumpets4tea There's a Snappy Snaps on New St, up the top end towards Victoria Sq.
We've used them a few times lately for passport photos and only paid £6.99.

On mine I was two months into growing out a pixie cut. It's horrendous.

Does anybody remember (you sound like you might MsHomeSlice!) there was a show on in the nineties, presented by Lowry Turner, and I distinctly remember, even though I was about 8, they did an episode showing you how to get a good passport photo. I remember her applying a load of orange slap, spreading a sheet of aluminium foil onto her lap and stating 'this is no time for the natural look!'

Well I remembered that today! In the work toilets applying the best of my make up bag going 'this is no time for the natural look!' In my head. Alright I didn't have any foil but still. I've seen better photos of shrunken heads.

In mine I look like a 60 year old version of a 1970s lady criminal. It was taken at a photography studio in my late 30s, after the stupidly obsessed woman in the check and send service rejected my photos 3 times because my ears were not perfectly aligned (they are not). When I said to the woman at studio that they didn’t resemble me (In the photo I was pinkish white and I’m dark, there was so much contrast I was showing bags under my eyes that I still don’t have years later and my brown hair looked a dark copper tone), she said “it is a passport photo, everyone looks horrible, you just need to hide your passport after you use it”. Nowadays I would have left the place without the photos and without paying but I was so tired that I went ahead with them.

Every time I show the passport, the person takes a second look or third look or start questioning me as nauseum.

To make the matters worse, I renewed my driving license last year, it was so near to the deadline I had to go for the faster more automatic option: I got a brand new license with my ... horrible passport photo.

There is nowhere to hide now.

I am old enough to remember dear dear Lowry, was it maybe the model type show that was on a Sunday evening?

I must have got that tip in my brain from somewhere ! :o